Beck: Hollywood Hitman (7 page)

Not Beck.

His job was secure and he got paid whether Natalie fired him or not.

She wouldn’t fire him.

He’d called her bluff. She lay in bed burning. She shot words like bullets aimed with that smart mouth, but now, her tongue was locked. A truth she couldn’t admit, most likely not even to herself, was that Natalie wanted, no
needed
Beck to take the wheel. Especially now that they were on some slick-ass dangerous terrain.

“Get some sleep.” Beck’s gaze slid over her outline under her comforter. What would it feel like to slide beneath the comforter and wrap his arms around her? Keep her safe and in his arms.

He wouldn’t find out.

“I’ll be right outside your room.”

Fire crackled between them. He’d be a fool to ignore the attraction. Better to acknowledge the want, if only to himself, so he could assess and insulate against his own weaknesses.

“Just say my name and I’m here.”

Her eyes flashed and then her body relaxed as though she’d carried the world on her shoulders and she was grateful for another person to carry part of the load.

“I’m safe,” she whispered, her eyelids drooping and those long lashes brushing against her skin.

“How long since you felt that way?”

She shook her head. Her gaze distant and unfocused. A sad little smile played across her lips. “I can’t remember feeling safe.”

His heart tightened. Beck understood Natalie’s words. He’d worked hard to guarantee his own safety with brute strength, weapons knowledge, and training, because as a kid, he’d felt unsure and at risk.

“You’re safe now.” He pounded down the urge to reach out and caress her jaw, cradle her face, press his lips to the top of her head. Feelings of warmth and possession and want mixed with his need to protect. A dangerous cocktail of chemical desire pumped through his body.

“Go to sleep. No one is getting into this house tonight.” Let her get the kind of rest you could only get when you knew you were secure.

She believed him. Gone was the hint of fear in her eyes; instead, gratitude warmed her gaze. She snuggled beneath her covers, burrowing in like a kitten with a warm blanket. “Thank you,” she whispered.

His heart clutched and his cock hardened. Bad. News. Shit, she was too fucking beautiful and smart and sassy and vulnerable. Four things he didn’t want in this woman because those four things, combined with his desire for her, could completely undo him.

Chapter Nine

Her head had split and a cat had slept on her tongue. A drill shrieked and hammers pounded. Natalie pressed her fingertips to her temples and rubbed. Slowly she pulled off the covers and rose to vertical. Immediately, her shadow—the big hulking guy with amazing biceps—ambled into her bedroom.

“Good morning, sunshine.” No smile from Beck, just smart words, although she heard the hint of happiness in his voice. A fuzzy memory of him bringing her water and ibuprofen flitted through her mind.

“Too much noise.”

“They’re here to secure the premises.” A buzz saw joined the jacked-up noise of drills.

“I thought that’s what you’re here for!” she yelled over the noise. God, that hurt.

“I can’t be everywhere at once. The system is inadequate for your needs.”

“Would that be Fort Knox or Sing Sing?”

“Your room remains private as well as your bathroom.”

Ten thousand square feet in the Hollywood Hills and she’d been relegated to two rooms. The buzz saw shredded the momentary silence.

“This is too much,” she yelled, and retreated to the bathroom. A knock interrupted her stripping off her pajamas to take a shower. She jerked open the door a crack. “What?”

“Meet me downstairs. We have security issues to discuss and I’d like to go over some basic self-defense moves.”

“That’s why
you’re
here.”

To his credit Beck’s gaze didn’t drop to her naked body. His gaze remained locked to her eyes. “I won’t be here forever.”

Her heart stalled. Gone? Last night she’d slept better than she’d slept in years. Of course she wouldn’t tell
him
that, but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d experienced that kind of deep sleep.

She slammed shut the bathroom door. “I’ll be down after my shower.” She didn’t have anything more to say to Beck, plus she didn’t want to tempt fate where his eyes were concerned.

***

Long before Greystone, Beck learned to maintain a focused gaze no matter the stimuli, and Natalie Warner’s naked body was some fucking amazing stimuli. While his gaze never wavered, he had peripheral vision. A sliver of supple skin, her breasts, flared hips. His cock was rock solid and that was unacceptable. But he was a man, and she was a woman. One of the most beautiful women in the world.

And he’d just seen her naked. All of her naked. The reflection in the mirror behind her providing a nearly full view of her body.

Fuck.

Natalie’s ass could make a man weep. Round and full. To clasp his hands around that full ass and lean forward and put his face between her legs . . .

He was here to protect her, not sleep with her.

A cold shower. He didn’t have time. Instead he forced the few memories he had of his last assignment to flood his mind. The blood. The death. The betrayal. The . . . heartache. Any thoughts of desire were chased away by the dread that filled his belly.

The dread was safer than desire or joy. With the dread he was prepared to face anything. Desire and joy? They led to losing the things you cared for.

***

She pulled on shorts and a tank top. Her hair still wet, she pattered down the stairs ready for coffee. The hammers and skull-splitting drills still blasted through the house. Beck looked too professional and put together for this early. He stood beside the kitchen island with a stack of papers.

“Coffee?” she asked.

Beck shook his head, his face a locked-jaw granite facade. He’d seemed happier before she took her shower, now he was stern and all business. Damn, she couldn’t read him . . . well, maybe a little.

In Beck’s blue eyes was a flicker of heat. Desire coiled thick and wound tight around her gut. Was she imagining these feelings? No . . . yes . . . wow, she had one powerful imagination if this attraction that the two of them shared wasn’t real.

Beck didn’t turn away.

Heat flamed up her neck and over her shoulders. He’d seen her naked . . . or parts of her naked. He’d never let on, but there she’d been, standing before him without a stitch of clothes, and yet his gaze hadn’t flickered.

Knowing that he watched her as she poured a cup of coffee throttled her desires into overdrive. Sex in the morning? She’d always been a fan. And sex with Beck? A small smile flicked over her lips with the thoughts of that body, those abs, his thick muscled arms pulling her close and holding her tight as he nipped, and licked, and thrust into her. A shiver of desire chased down her spine.

Coffee in hand, she turned to Beck. He no longer stared at her, and a cool, somber feeling threaded through her body from the absence of his gaze. She liked him watching her. As fucked up as it sounded, his eyes on her made her feel safe and secure. And wanted.

She settled into a tallboy chair opposite Beck. He’d flipped over two pictures from the stack. Her belly tightened. Shit. Pictures of faces that she’d once loved but that had betrayed her trust. She took a swallow of her coffee. Fucking great way to start the day—with pictures of all the estranged people in her life.

“We need to have a conversation. I need to go over details to understand the threat.”

She sucked air deep into her lungs. Emptied her mind and opened her eyes. “Okay.”

“Your parents.”

She nodded. They’d aged poorly. Her dad with the shadowed look of an addict and her mom with a smile on her lips but sadness in her eyes.

“Either one a threat?”

“Mom, no. Daddy?” She paused. “Since their divorce . . . well . . .”

“Arrested six times since the emancipation. You bailed him out twice, but not after. Did jail time for DUI and possession.” Beck looked up from the picture of Natalie’s dad. “Seen him since then?”

“Nope.” Her throat tightened and she swallowed a sip of coffee. “Same story, different day. Gambling. Drinking. Needing money. Usually I delete his voicemails, but sometimes I listen to remind myself of who he is. He called the other day.”

Knowingness flickered in Beck’s eyes. “Your mom?”

“I hear from her more often.” Natalie’s chin dipped to her chest. She missed Mom. “Some days I want to see her and some days . . .” She shook her head. “They’re divorced now and just, whenever I’m with her, somehow I end up being the parent.”

“Like that your whole childhood?”

She squinted and her lips curled into a wry smile. “What childhood? They had me doing commercials when I was three months old. Had my first series by age nine. My daddy’s nickname for me was ATM.” She tilted her coffee cup and raised an eyebrow.

***

She was taking what Beck was serving. He pitched the questions hard and fast and then circled back. Question upon question. He needed to determine if the intel Estrella’s people had accumulated about Natalie’s life and the potential threats was accurate. Beck also wanted to understand where Natalie was emotionally vulnerable. Which of these people who’d betrayed her still inhabited a spot in her heart?

Beck set the picture of the wannabe gangster thug onto the marble counter. “Heard from Rico since his release?”

A sharp intake of air and Natalie’s eyes widened.

A slick, oily feeling curled through his gut. Fuck. Was Natalie’s psyche so dented that she still wanted this guy?

Color drained from her face, her skin now the color of paper. Rico had his hooks implanted into Natalie’s heart. Her gaze skittered away from Beck’s eyes.

Uh-oh. Not good. Not good at all. She was getting ready to lie to him or, even worse, she was lying to herself.

“I haven’t seen him since his release.”

Hmm. Maybe not a lie? Maybe just a careful use of words? She’d done the same yesterday at Villa Blanco.

“Have you
spoken
to him?” Beck kept a tight leash on his tone. Natalie’s eyes flashed with his question. “My ability to keep you safe becomes exponentially more difficult if you lie to me.”

Her eyes widened, those brilliant blue eyes that made Beck want to grab her, pull her onto the kitchen island, and press his dick deep into her body.

The pulse in her neck fluttered, her nostrils flared, and her pupils dilated. She either wanted to kill him, fuck him, or do either to Rico.

“I’ve spoken to him,” Natalie finally admitted.

“More than once?”

“More than once. A few times. He wants to see me. I told him no.”

Tightly coiled, he’d held his breath waiting for her answer about this fucking bastard. “What he did to you and those other people makes him a big risk.”

Natalie shook her head. “No, no, no, Rico wouldn’t ever hurt me, he—”

“He hurt you before.” Beck flipped over the photo of Natalie’s busted face with bruises and red marks. Angry stitches across her chin and cheekbone.

“That was an accident,” Natalie said. “He didn’t do that, my face . . . my accident wasn’t his fault.”

“He pled guilty.”

Natalie’s cheeks pulled inward as though she held back words that wanted to be set free. “Events aren’t always as they appear.”

Boy, didn’t he know it. He’d spent a decade pretending to be someone he wasn’t.

“I know Rico and I know he won’t hurt me. I also know that our time together is over.” Her gaze locked on Beck. “I don’t love him anymore.”

The knot in Beck’s chest loosened. Fucking dangerous for him to care who Natalie Warner loved or didn’t love. Not his business. Not supposed to be his business. Not now, not ever.

“Do you know where he is? Where he’s staying?”

“Not for certain.” She dropped her gaze to her hands. “But I have ideas.”

“He’s the reason you don’t want the police involved. It’s not your image or your career.”

She stiffened and her eyebrow raised. With a tilt of her head she gave him all the answer he needed. Yeah, she might be over the bastard, but for some reason she was still trying to protect the S.O.B.

“I don’t have the luxury of a personal life. I try to keep some things private.”

“Understood. There’s one more—we’re unsure about identity.”

Beck flipped over another photo. A grainy shot of a person in a hoodie. Their face shadowed.

Natalie leaned forward and her brows wrinkled. “I don’t know who that is. I can’t even see their face.”

“Neither do we. And that’s the problem. No clear shot of a face, but take a look in the background of the photo.”

Natalie’s heart stalled. Acid churned in her gut and fear hardened into a thick ball in her throat. The guy was ten feet away from where she was getting into her car on Sunset Boulevard.

“And again here.” Beck flipped over another picture. This time they were closer to her . . . so close.

The hair rose on the back of her neck and her heart beat fast. They were right beside her outside Chaya as the valet handed her the keys to her car.

“And one more.”

“Who is that?” God, in some pictures this person was close enough to touch her, reach out and grab her, and she hadn’t even noticed, hadn’t seen them, hadn’t even been aware . . .

“We don’t know, but we’ll find out. I need your schedule for the next three months. I also need the names of every person who has access to your schedule.”

“That’s a long list.”

“We need to make that list shorter.” Beck leaned forward and closed the distance between them. The photos of Rico and the hoodie-wearing creeper lay between them like a pinless grenade. “I’m here to keep you safe regardless of the situation you choose to be in.”

Heat flooded the space between them. Yeah. There was that pulse again, in her neck, beating like she was running a fucking sprint.

“I’ve . . . in the past . . .” Her gaze dropped to her hands and she rubbed the back of her right hand with her fingertips. Those giant eyes flicked back up to him. Her voice was soft, nearly a whisper. “I’ve put myself in some questionable places. Done some questionable things.”