Burn: A South Beach Bodyguards Book (2 page)

I lowered my hand, thoroughly confused. It was Isabel. The daughter of the woman my father had briefly been married to the year before. Why the hell was Isabel in my shower? Naked. My eyes dropped down before I could stop them. Holy fuck…

She put her hand to her chest and took deep breaths, blinking away the spray that was hitting her in the face. “Oh, geez, Ryan, you scared me.”

“I thought you were a burglar. I could have shot you.”

For the first time she looked down and saw the gun in my hand. “Oh, my God! Why do you have a gun?”

That should be obvious. “Because I’m a bodyguard and I came into my locked apartment and heard someone in here.” I was seriously annoyed but I couldn’t figure out if it was because she’d broken into my apartment, or because I was distracted by her body to the point that my thoughts were muddied and running straight down into the gutter.

“Don’t be silly,” she said, and gave me a sparkly smile. “Your dad let me in.”

And I was going to kill him.

Isabel and I weren’t close, because my dad and I weren’t exactly hangout buddies. I had gone to his wedding to Kim because he’d been a whiny prick about it, and that had been the first time I’d met Isabel. After that, I had seen her exactly three times. Then my dad and Kim had split up after a very short marriage and I didn’t expect I would ever see Isabel again, despite the fact that she and Kim were living in the house I’d grown up in. I sure in the hell hadn’t expected to see all of her. Naked. Wet.

The wet part was killing me. Along with the naked. I reached out and turned off the water.

“Hey! I’m not finished.” She turned the water back on and ran her hands over her breasts, sliding delicate fingers over the full flesh, massaging them.

My erection was at full force. The only thing harder was the steel of my gun. How was she so casually just washing herself in front of me? From the previous brief encounters I had thought Isabel was shy, young. She was still in college, I was pretty sure. This was not a girl who was bashful. This was literally in my face. Tits and ass, and I was not having thoughts that were decent. I was having deep down dirty thoughts that made me feel both hot and ashamed. This was not a girl I should be picturing lifting her leg and sinking inside her. Yet I was. And I was going to until she stopped touching herself.

Or until I stepped back and closed the liner and the bathroom door.

Funny how those very rational thoughts came last.

I dropped my gaze, determined to pull it together and be respectful. It was something I prided myself on- I wasn’t charming, but I was respectful of women. My personal code of honor.

“When you’re finished, I’ll be in the living room. Have you eaten? Would you like some pizza?”

“Yum!” she said and her voice was sunny and cheerful. “Thanks!”

I fell back. This was just weird. That didn’t even sound like Isabel. “There are towels under the sink. Come out when you’re ready… and dressed.” That didn’t seem like something I needed to point out, but for my own sanity it needed to be clear.

I shut the bathroom door behind me and shoved my gun back into my waistband. Running my fingers through my hand I swore under my breath and pulled my phone out as I went into my kitchen. Beer. I needed one, hard core. I popped a top then took a swill, flipping open my laptop on the counter to order a pizza. That done, I called my dad.

“You home?” he said as a greeting. “How is she?”

“Naked,” I said flatly, astonished.

“What? What the hell, Ryan? Don’t be taking advantage of Isabel. What is wrong with you?”

That was rich. I snorted. “Dad, I walked in to my apartment to find her in my shower, acting like she doesn’t have a care in the world. Explain to me what is going on please, before I get pissed off.”

“We have a situation. Kim called me. She came home, found Isabel in the house at the bottom of the steps, bleeding from a head wound. The ER says she’s fine, but Isabel doesn’t remember what happened. I can’t be too careful, you know what I’m saying? So while I’m looking into it, I needed a safe house for her and you’re it.”

That was exactly the last thing he could say to prevent me from getting angry. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?” I glanced back to make sure the bathroom door was still closed. “You think your shady business dealings have bled over onto Isabel? That’s just great, Dad. She’s about as innocent as they come.” She was. Naïve, too. She had seemed to me like the kind of girl who trusted people on sight for no reason. It was unnerving as hell.

“I know she’s innocent. That’s why I need you to look out for her.”

I took another pull on my beer, needing a second before I spoke to keep the edge out of my voice. “Thanks for asking if I want to be involved, by the way.”

Mickey gave a scoff. “It’s family and you’ll do what you’re told. Why wouldn’t you want to help your stepsister?”

“She’s not my stepsister. You were married to Kim for about thirty seconds.”

“Stop being a smartass. Just keep her there until you hear from me.”

He hung up.

Just like that. He just hung up. Yep, still an asshole.

But he was a smart asshole. He knew what he was doing and he knew how I would react. I would never put Isabel in jeopardy and I would never toss her out of my apartment until I knew she was safe. I dumped my phone on the countertop and put my hand on my hip. Glancing back at the bathroom, like that was going to tell me anything, I decided to take my gun out of my waistband and put it up in the cabinet until I could have a gun safety conversation with Isabel.

Then I checked the lock on the door, and flipped the blinds open slightly to see what was going on in the parking lot of the apartment complex and on Harding Avenue behind it. Nothing out of the ordinary. My elderly neighbor and her dog had gone in and there wasn’t much movement on the sidewalks, just traffic that was already thinning. I had nothing to go on. Dad had a ton of enemies, his business dealings always very heavily into the gray territory. His security business was legitimate or I wouldn’t work there, but the other ventures, like the real estate and the nightclubs and the car dealership? I didn’t know and I didn’t want to know. But that meant I knew next to nothing about who might be after him, or want to teach him a lesson.

Though it seemed to me if someone wanted to hurt my father, they would have gone for Kim, not Isabel. But Kim and Isabel lived in the house in the Gables that my father had given her as a parting divorce present. So maybe they’d popped Isabel by accident? I had no idea and it was giving me a headache. I felt a pit in my gut over the thought that Isabel had been cracked on the skull. She could have been killed.

Yet when she emerged from the bathroom, humming to herself, and wearing nothing but a very tight T-shirt and panties, she didn’t seem like she was the least bit afraid or in any pain.

She smiled at me. “Ah, that feels better. That blood was killer to get out of my hair.” Then she suddenly frowned at me. “Wait. Why did I have blood in my hair?”

“Um…” The what-the-fuck-moments just kept coming. “Your mom found you at the bottom of the stairs, Isabel. You hit your head. Don’t you remember going to the hospital?” And for fuck’s sake, didn’t she remember she had arrived wearing pants? I couldn’t find anywhere to look that wasn’t a danger zone. Her shirt was clinging to her like a second skin, her nipples poking through the thin cotton. It skimmed her waist and there was a smooth ribbon of flesh between her shirt and her extremely tiny pink panties.

She bent over the kitchen counter, so that she could lean on it, propping her head up with her hand, sending her ass jutting out. My throat went tight. My hands shook a little when I reached for my beer again. Look. Don’t touch. Then I mentally slapped myself. I couldn’t even look.

“Why did you just call me Isabel?”

And it just got weirder. “Because that’s your name.”

“No, it’s not. It’s Julia.” She gave me a sultry, flirtatious smile. “Are you teasing me?”

If anyone was doing any teasing, it sure in the hell was not me. “Is this some kind of game? Because I don’t know how to play it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Stop messing with my head.” She reached over and grabbed my beer, licking the rim in a manner that was very clearly meant to be seductive.

I felt the urge to physically back up, afraid I was going to grow another hard on and she would see it. “What do you remember about going home? Where were you before you got home?” I needed to try to approach this logically. Maybe she’d just rattled her brains a little and she was… what? Knocked into sexiness? That was ridiculous.

She frowned. “I… I don’t know.” Panic flooded her features. “Oh, my God, I can’t remember!”

That wasn’t good, because it meant she couldn’t identify her attacker, but at the same time, probably pretty normal. Trauma usually was a blank spot for most people, at least for the few minutes before and after an accident. What wasn’t normal was that she thought her name was Julia. “It’s not a big deal. You got knocked on the head. I think it makes sense you don’t remember what happened. Do you have a headache? Do you want any ibuprofen?” Maybe a pill could make this not so fucking weird. Maybe it could make her realize that bending over like that was a bad idea.

“I mean, I feel okay, but you’re right, I probably should.”

I gently took the beer bottle back from her. “And no drinking. There is soda and water in the fridge. I’ll get you something.” I turned and pulled out a flavored water. “Here, strawberry water. Refreshing.” I felt flustered as hell as I twisted the top off for her and sat it down on the counter in front of her. “I’ll get you some ibuprofen.”

She took a sip, doing that thing with her tongue that she’d done to the beer. Just flicking it out and licking the rim, around, in a slow, teasing circle. “Mmm. Isn’t strawberry an aphrodisiac?”

Literally everything was an aphrodisiac at that moment. Jesus. She was unnerving me. My last conversation with Isabel, she had crossed her arms over her chest, looked down at the ground repeatedly, and had talked about nothing but her dog. This was a completely different person.

“I have no idea,” I told her flatly. “I thought it was chocolate that gets people going.”

“Do you have any chocolate?”

I could feel my eyebrows furrow. I was frowning so hard I was viewing her out of eyes closed to mere slits. I needed an explanation and I needed it fast because Flirty Isabel was jacking with my head. “No.”

The doorbell rang, saving my sorry ass. “Get in the bedroom and put some clothes on,” I told her. “The pizza guy is here and he doesn’t need to see you half naked.”

“This is Miami. People wear less than this on the beach.”

“We’re not on the beach. Get dressed!” Suddenly, I sounded like an old Cuban grandmother.

She curled her lip into a pout. “Fine.” She flounced past me.

She fucking flounced. Who did that? It made me think that maybe I didn’t know Isabel even on a superficial level or that maybe she’d been sick or something when I had interacted with her before. Not that there was an illness that made you shy and when you got well you morphed in to mega flirt. I didn’t think. Rubbing my forehead, I went and opened the door.

“
Hola,
” the pizza man said with a smile, pulling the box out of the warmer case.

Despite having grown up in Miami, my Spanish was kind of shit, but I was definitely used to the assumption that conversation could be started in Spanish. So I greeted him in kind, paid him, and took my pie, bending over to sniff the box. I was that kind of hungry. Deep, growling hunger. Isabel came back into the living room, still not dressed. My dick hardened. I was the other kind of hungry as well, damn it.

“Where are your pants, Isabel?” I asked, exasperated. I checked behind me to make sure I had locked the front door behind the deliveryman.

“I want to know why you’re calling me Isabel.”

This again? I stared at her, trying to figure the game out. Was I being punked? Set up? “Because it’s your name. Did you bring your purse with you? Let’s pull out your driver’s license. Let’s look at your cell phone, too.” Maybe there was a clue as to what she’d been doing before she took a blunt object to the head.

I didn’t even know where her stuff was so I went to my bathroom and there at least I solved the mystery of her pants. There was a pair of jeans on the floor and I picked them up. A little dirt on the cuffs and on one knee. No purse though. I turned around and went into the hallway, then drew up short. Holy shit.

Isabel was standing in the kitchen eating a piece of pizza, her profile to me.

Naked.