Burn: A South Beach Bodyguards Book (7 page)

That was alarming, on how many levels. I swallowed an uncomfortable lump and tugged at the neckline of Ryan’s shirt. “Why would I be in danger?” And good Lord, how long was I supposed to be shacking up with him? I didn’t think I could behave normally for very long. Not that I was even now. “Where is my dog?”

I knew I had to be have been out of it if I willingly left Buster behind.

“I’m sure your mom took the dog with her. She’s staying with my dad.”

That didn’t sound like firm knowledge. “But you don’t know that? I need to call her.” I felt my pockets, where I usually tucked my phone when I wasn’t carrying a purse. Nothing. “Where is my phone?” I was starting to panic. I could feel it crawling up my throat, tightening my airway in its wake. I hadn’t had an anxiety attack in a long time. Over a year. But I felt it happening now and I started to see spots, my heart racing, breathing labored. I knew that if I didn’t get a grip, it would spiral out in an asthma attack and I had no clue where my inhaler was.

Suddenly Ryan was in front of me, his large hands swallowing my arms in a firm grip. “Hey. Look at me.”

I was having trouble focusing, but I found a spot on his chin where he had a scar and I stared at it, trying to calm my breathing. I could hear the ragged wheeze rattling in and out of my mouth and it scared me. Struggling to calm myself down, I listened to his voice as he said firmly, “You’re okay. Your dog is okay. You know your mom wouldn’t leave him home alone. Your phone is in the living room.”

That relieved me somewhat, but the panic had already gotten a grip on me, and I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. I lifted my gaze to Ryan’s eyes and I tried to communicate without words that I needed help. His hands lifted and cupped my cheeks. They were so big that he encircled my entire face and his thumbs ran over my cheeks, back and forth.

“Shh. Take a deep breath. Not a small one. A deep one. You’re okay. Breathe with me.” He drew in a deep lungful of air.

I tried to match his movement, but my throat closed off. When I started to tense, he shook his head. “Don’t fight it. Just breathe in. That’s it. Breathe out.”

I finally got a full breath into my lungs and it helped to calm me down. I stared into his hazel eyes, focusing on the ring of amber than encircled his pupil. His eyes were concerned, caring. It made me feel better. The tension in my shoulders eased and I realized that I had been digging my nails into his forearms. I dropped my arms quickly. I nodded, needing to reassure both him and me. “I’m okay.”

“You’re okay.” Ryan lowered his hands to my shoulders and pulled me into a loose hug. “Shit, you scared me there for a minute.”

“I have asthma,” I said, into his warm chest. “I don’t know where my inhaler is.”

“I’ll drive you over to your house to get it if you think it’s there.”

I nodded. “I have a spare one in my room.”

“Okay, well let’s do that. Call your mom and check on the dog. That will make you feel better.” He rubbed my back and it was the gesture of a man who didn’t quite understand how big his hands were or how strong he was. It was like my spine was a washboard and he was doing laundry.

It made me rock a little on my feet. But oddly, it made me feel better. Those were strong hands. If anyone could hold me up, it was him. “Thanks, Ryan. I’m sorry you got stuck babysitting me.” That embarrassed me.

He stepped back and gave me a small smile. “My pleasure.”

His voice was low, filled with innuendo. Or was I imagining it? It was just a rote response, nothing more. I needed to get a grip on my emotions. I had punched a hole into Ryan’s time and privacy, the least I could do was stay somewhat rational.

“I don’t understand why I don’t remember anything.”

“I think that’s normal after a head trauma. I’m going to get dressed. You hungry?”

The thought of food made my stomach turn. “No. I’ll go get my shirt from the bathroom.” The images of me naked, eating pizza, kept haunting me. “Hey, uh, was I weird last night?”

“No,” he said, but Ryan was a terrible liar. His voice went up like an entire octave and he avoided looking at me, busying himself with digging in his dresser.

Great. That wasn’t even remotely reassuring. “Ryan, be honest. I’m a big girl, I can take it. What did I do?” Please, dear God, don’t let me have confessed I had a mega crush on him. Anything but that. Literally anything but that.

“You really want to know?”

No. Yes. I nodded.

“You kept taking your clothes off. That’s all.”

My cheeks flamed. So the dreams weren’t dreams after all. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

Ryan shook his head. “Don’t worry about it.”

That was it. He didn’t say anything else. He just pulled a shirt on over his head.

I hesitated, not sure what else to say, but feeling like I needed to apologize further. “I hope I didn’t embarrass you.”

That made his head snap up. He frowned. “I don’t get embarrassed.”

“Ever?”

“No. But I am angry with myself.”

“Why?”

He glanced down at my chest, then back up. “Because I looked. I admit it. I tried not to, but you kept taking your clothes off, and it just got too fucking hard, Isabel. I looked.”

The heat in my cheeks increased. But I also felt a warm sensation blooming between my thighs. “Did… did you like what you saw?” I shouldn’t have asked. It wasn’t fair to ask him that. It was clearly fishing.

“I liked it.” He slammed the drawer shut. His expression was stormy. “Just don’t do it again.”

Wow. Duly noted. Keep my clothes on. Check.

It felt like an insult. A criticism. Or maybe it was just my own feelings of embarrassment for having been such a flirt, or presumably a flirt. It was also my frustration with my own awkwardness, my inability to entice a man of any decency.

I was still a virgin. The man who I had been fantasizing about altering that state of my body was standing right in front of me telling me to keep my clothes on. So I gathered my inner Julia and I stood there and stripped his huge shirt off over my head, leaving me in my bra.

He made a strangled sound in the back of his throat. I held my arm straight out and let go. Boom. Mic drop.

Shirt down and Isabel out.

I
stood there and watched Isabel spin on her heels and leave my bedroom, in painted on skinny jeans and a bra that was bursting at the seams. She had done that on purpose. What the hell? Was she fucking trying to torture me? Because it was working. Ripping a pair of shorts out of my dresser, I stepped in to them, shoving my dick out of the way when it got caught on the zipper because it was so hard.

Bullshit. This was all bullshit. How did I get sucked into this and now why did I feel like Isabel was pissed off at me? I stepped into flipflops and went into the kitchen for my gun. I needed a cup of coffee and to get laid. I was wound up, tense, surly. My shower jack off hadn’t taken the edge off of the desire I felt for Isabel and I wanted nothing more than to grab that curvy ass of hers and pump into her, hard.

Keyed up, I ignored Isabel as she came out of the bathroom. I didn’t want to look at her and be both turned on and disgusted with myself. I jammed my gun into my waistband and grabbed my car keys off the countertop. “Are you ready?”

“Yes. Can I have my phone please?”

Right. Her phone. “Who the fuck is that jackhole, Juan Carlos?” I asked, and I sounded like a dick. A huge, rude, jealous dickhead.

Isabel bristled. “Why do you care?”

Good question. “Because we’re trying to figure out what happened to you,” I said shortly. I got her phone out of the junk drawer where I had thrown it. “Here. Don’t delete anything.”

She made a face at me.

“Who is Juan Carlos?” I asked again.

“A guy I’ve gone on a few dates with.”

“Did you tell him you didn’t want to see him anymore?”

“Yes. Yesterday.”

“Why?”

“Because we wanted different things.” She sounded a little flustered, but she didn’t explain any further. “I was kind of vague about it though. I don’t like to hurt anyone’s feelings.”

“Does he frequently send you dick pics?”

She made a sound of exasperation and bent her head over her phone. “That is none of your business.” She swiped and then started typing.

I waited but she didn’t say anything else. “What are you doing?”

“I’m texting my mother!”

“Oh.” That would be me, feeling like a douchebag. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

She blew her hair out of her eyes and tucked her phone into her pocket. “I’m ready.”

I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary outside, so I just ushered Isabel to my car, putting my hand on the small of her back. She shifted out of my touch and I knew I’d lost points with her after gaining some by helping her through the asthma attack. My confession over seeing her naked hadn’t gone well. I wasn’t sure if she was upset or embarrassed or if she thought I was a pervert or what. I just knew she wasn’t happy and damn, I didn’t like that.

When I opened the door for her and she climbed into my car, I leaned way down so I could see her. “Hey. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you what I did.”

“It’s not a big deal,” she said shortly.

“I don’t believe you,” I told her, scoffing. It was clearly a big deal. I just didn’t know why it was a big deal.

She didn’t say anything, just blinked up at me.

“Okay, then.” I shut the door. I got in the car and pulled out of the parking lot. “Do you want some coffee? I need a cup.” Or twelve.

“No, thanks. It’s kind of hot today for January.”

It was. The temperature was already past eighty and it was only eight in the morning. But unlike a lot of January days, where the breeze cut down the heat index, the air felt still, muggy. “They do iced coffee, too. It’s a thing.”

She made a face. “I don’t like coffee in any form.”

That made her an enigma to me. I rolled my window down, wanting some fresh air, even if it wasn’t fresh. “When was the last time you went to the beach?” I asked her, craving cool waves over my skin. Maybe a hard swim would knock some of the restlessness out of me.

“I don’t know. Maybe last September? Something like that.”

“I was there in October. Why don’t you grab your bathing suit at the house and we can go this afternoon.” Technically, that didn’t fall under the umbrella of proper security techniques, but it wasn’t like I wasn’t going to take my gun, no matter what. But then I thought about leaving it rolled up in my towel and decided that wasn’t such a great idea. I could hear Alejandro telling me to go for it, but I wasn’t as much of a rule breaker as he was. Actually, I wasn’t a rule breaker at all. “Scratch that. It’s a bad idea until we know what’s going on.” My number one priority had to be keeping her safe, not cooling down in the ocean.

“I don’t understand why anyone would want to intentionally hurt me,” Isabel said. “I am not the type of person who makes enemies.”

“This isn’t about you,” I said, as I fished my sunglasses out of the glove box. “This is about my dad. You have to know he does shit that is not legal.”

She frowned. “I didn’t know that. What do you mean?”

She couldn’t be serious. “Mickey firmly believes in the motto of the Beach. If you’re not indicted, you’re not invited. His whole social circle is criminal. You can’t call it mob, but they’re all trying to get away with what they can in the pursuit of big money. This town was built on that principle.”

“Does my mom know that?” She sounded aghast.

I suppose I couldn’t blame her but at the same time I was floored by her innocence and naiveté. Was there ever a time when I was that freaking unaware of how people were always out to get what they could? If there was, I didn’t remember it. Actually, that wasn’t true. I had a memory of being four and my parents were throwing a big party, right after we moved into the house in Coral Gables. My father thought it made him made him look respectable, that somehow he and his former stripper wife were shaking the glitter of South Beach off of them and living the American dream. I had a babysitter, but she had been just as eager as me to crash the party, and I had been young enough to assume that my parents were good people, who were well liked. But by the end of that party, I knew that a lot of adults cheated, did drugs, got into physical fights, and gave a shit about no one but themselves.