Diva (Ironclad Bodyguards Book 2) (3 page)

The bodyguard stood in front of the window and ordered breakfast in slow, patient, neutral-American English. She took the opportunity to study his face, now that he wasn’t looking at her. The sun illuminated his dark brows and strong cheekbones, and his prominent, masculine nose. His lips were sexy, full and expressive even when he wasn’t speaking.

“Yes, I know it’s after two o’clock,” he said, turning away. “Could you please make an exception?” In the end he got his way, because he said thank you in both English and some Euro language. Show off.

But wow, he had a marvelous ass for an older guy. He had a really, really great, firm, sculpted ass beneath those Wall Street pants.

He turned back and caught her staring at his ten-out-of-ten posterior. She quickly dropped her gaze. Now that the ache in her head had subsided, reasoned thoughts emerged. It wasn’t polite to stare, and she was suddenly, painfully conscious of her skimpy bikini and skintight shorts. She wondered if
he
was the one who’d put a shirt on her after she passed out last night.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking back up at him. “I forgot your name.”

“Ransom Gutierrez.”

Oh yeah, the whole kidnapping thing. “Look, Mr. Gutierrez—”

“You can call me Ransom. We’re going to become very good friends.”

She hated the way he said that. “I don’t need a bodyguard.” She downed the last of the electrolyte-enhanced water. “Greg keeps the crazies away, and I have another assistant who helps m—”

“If you mean Marty, he’s been fired.”

“What?”

Shit, shit, shit. Fired? Marty was her lifeline. He helped her dress and eat and sleep, procured her drugs, and even fucked her sometimes when she couldn’t find anyone else.

“Why was he fired?” she asked. “He was my employee.”

“I think you know why he was fired, and I think you understand why I’m here. Your illustrious tour sponsors are concerned about you becoming a liability.”

“A liability?” She threw up her arms. “Those assholes. I’m the entire fucking reason for this tour. If I’m not here, no one shows up.”

“Exactly. They lose a lot of money if your lifestyle renders you unable to perform.”

“My
lifestyle
?” Her stomach started churning all over again. “What lifestyle?”

“The alcohol. The drugs. The shady friends. The all-night parties and marginal nightclubs.”

But… But…
“I didn’t go out last night.”

“Because you blacked out after your show.” He sat on the bed across from her chair, so they were eye to eye, and regarded her with his hands braced on his knees. “Rule number one, Miss Reynolds: No more drugs, not on this tour.”

She couldn’t stand the imperious way he talked to her, like he was the master of the universe and she was some peon. She was Lady Paradise, and she’d sold twenty-five million singles last year. “I don’t use that many drugs,” she said.

He gave her an arch look. “You’re talking to the person who carried your limp, boneless corpse through the hotel lobby and up to this room last night at four in the morning.”

“They were bad pills, or I took too many or something. Lesson learned.”

“Have you really learned a lesson?” His nostrils flared like he smelled something unpleasant. She didn’t know why she noticed that. She didn’t know why everything had turned so scary and serious. “MadDance, Inc. thinks you’re getting worse, not better,” he said.

“Who’s MadDance Ink?”

“MadDance Incorporated. They’re paying for your tour expenses and manager, in exchange for your fitness to perform. You understand how all this works? You signed a contract, Miss Reynolds.”

She remembered signing a contract. She didn’t need some towering, muscle-bound bodyguard throwing it in her face. What the fuck kind of name was Ransom anyway? “My name’s Lola,” she snapped. “You calling me
Miss Reynolds
in that fucking tone doesn’t make you a polite guy.”

“I’m not here to be polite. I’m here to keep you alive and healthy for the next two months.”

Ugh. Jerk. Smartass. He was going to throw attitude at her all fucking day and all fucking night. She stared out the window at the sunlight and wondered what city she was in. She didn’t want to ask because she didn’t want to admit how out of touch she’d become with the day-to-day schedule. She didn’t want to admit how dependent she’d become on Marty during this tour.

“Why don’t you get out of here so I can sleep?” She left the chair and went back to her rumpled bed, burrowing under the sheets. Had he slept in the other bed? She couldn’t tell. It was neatly made up.

“You should take a shower before the food gets here,” he suggested. “Or are you just going to wear that same outfit on through to tomorrow night?”

“That’s none of your fucking business.” But yeah, she was gross. Her clothes were wrinkled and slept in. She needed to take off her stale makeup. Her haphazard braids looked like rats had been gnawing on them. “I want to take a shower, but not with you in the room.”

“Sorry, I can’t leave. I’m on supervisory detail.”

Ugh. She’d known he wouldn’t leave.

“If you stay here, you’re probably going to see me naked,” she said, in some pathetic attempt to rattle him.

“I pretty much saw you naked during your set last night.”

No, not rattled at all. He raked a gaze over her body, and even with the shirt on over her skimpy costume, she felt exposed.

“Listen, kid,” he said when his dark eyes finally meandered back to her face. “I’ve seen plenty of bare skin in my line of work. It doesn’t matter to me. I have a job to do, and that job is getting you to each venue of this tour on time and in shape to perform. You can parade around naked if you like, or you can wrap up in a towel. You can sing in the shower. You can pick your nose or scratch your ass. You can pretend I don’t exist, but I’m going to be within ten feet of you for the next couple months, so if I were you, I’d just take that shower.”

She went to her luggage in a huff, dragging it with her toward the bathroom door. She thought she might still have some ecstasy tablets stashed in the front pocket of her cosmetics bag.

“Oh, and just so you aren’t disappointed, I’ve already been through your things and confiscated the items you’re not allowed to have.”

She froze mid-step. “What do you mean, you’ve
been through my things
?”

“I mean that I looked through all your belongings and confiscated items you’re not allowed to—”

“What the fuck! You pawed through my personal shit?”

She had private journals and lingerie with her. Condoms and lube and sex toys. She could see from the glint in his eyes that he’d found all those things and more during his illegal luggage search.

“Just doing my job,” he said.

“You’re an asshole. I never agreed to this. I’ll quit this fucking tour and they’ll be sorry.” She put her hands on her hips and let him have it, even though he was so much bigger than her. “I don’t need the money from these festivals, you fucking prick. Do you know how much I made last year? Enough that I don’t have to put up with this kind of bullshit.”

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. They both knew she couldn’t quit, because she’d signed a contract, and somewhere in that contract it probably said they reserved the right to hire asshole bodyguards to interfere in her life.

She went into the bathroom and slammed the door, then leaned on the sink, taking deep breaths. She felt like she might vomit again, but there was nothing to bring up but a bunch of shitty electrolyte water. Fuck this shit, fuck him and his judgey frowns, and his illegal searches and confiscations. He wanted her to stop partying and going to nightclubs? Fat fucking chance. She was Lady Paradise and she had an image to uphold.

MadDance, Inc.? Fuck em. At the end of the day, they needed to dance to her tune, because this tour was nothing without her.

*

Ransom sighed and
sat by the window to wait for the food to arrive. Fuck. That hadn’t gone well.

Not that he’d expected it to. He’d assumed he’d get some blowback for ousting her assistant/drug mule, and informing her he was going to be living inside her ass for the rest of the tour. Rich, successful artist types rarely enjoyed hearing news like that.

But everything would be okay. From what he could see, his client wasn’t a hardened junkie, just a dumb kid who wanted to party. He didn’t know what was worse, that she’d asked him if they’d slept together, or that she actually believed he would have slept with her while she was blacked out. Had that happened to her in the past?

Dumbass kid. She didn’t have the body weight for the chemicals she was ingesting. Last night, when he’d picked her up and carried her off the bus, she’d felt so light she might fly away.

If she was a true junkie, she would have flipped out to find her small stash gone. He’d thrown away ecstasy and pot, amateur shit, although she’d been wired on something harder last night. He wasn’t sure what she’d taken, only knew he’d arrived here just in time.

Fucking Marty. He could tell in the course of one conversation with her “assistant” that he was a horrible influence, a hanger-on taking advantage of a rich, gullible young woman. Money led to drugs, drugs led to partying, partying led to questions like
Did we fuck?
It led to exploiters and users, and danger.

But Ransom was here to keep the danger away. The hard partying was over, at least for the rest of the tour, and if she had a problem with that, she could try to fight him. He was pretty sure he’d win.

Room service arrived just as she turned off the shower. By the time she opened the door, he’d set out the German idea of late breakfast: bread and cheese, fruit, yogurt, and miniature glazed doughnuts sprinkled with cinnamon. He wanted to stuff about twelve of them in his mouth. Wrangling hungover, immature brats made him hungry.

She came out of the bathroom with a thump of her luggage and a muffled curse. He looked up and paused mid-doughnut.

Lola Mae.

Those were the first two words that came to his mind, because he wasn’t looking at Lady Paradise the mega-millionaire DJ anymore. Without the slut makeup, without the riotous braids, without the bikini and booty shorts she looked…

She looked like a lost, befuddled kid named Lola Mae.

He felt a puzzling rush of attraction, a reaction to her rumpled, vulnerable freshness, and quickly turned away. It wasn’t his business to find his clients beautiful or attractive, especially when they were half his age. He hadn’t fallen for a client once in his career, and he wasn’t going to start now, not with this one. Her hair was pink, for fuck’s sake. It was darker pink now that it was wet. She wore a pale gray tee that made her blue eyes pop, and some worn jeans that fit obscenely well.

Okay. So she was sexy. She was fucking beautiful. Maybe he should have fucked her last night, if he could have pried off her skintight shorts. She wouldn’t have remembered it today.

He mentally shook himself and shoved the rest of the doughnut in his mouth. These inappropriate feelings wouldn’t last. He wasn’t the type of guy who panted over dwarf-sized, pink-haired twenty year olds. His last girlfriend had been a high-powered lawyer in New York, a statuesque prosecutor who was strong enough to challenge him both physically and intellectually. Those were the type of women he sought when the job gave him time to pursue a social life.

Not…this.

Lola tripped over her luggage and let loose a string of epithets in her Memphis drawl.
Fucking motherfucker goddamn cocksucker piece of shit.
Was she talking about the luggage, or him?

“Come eat something,” he said.

She gave him a dirty look and righted the luggage. “I’m not hungry.”

“Why’d you haul your whole suitcase into the bathroom?”

Her dirty look grew even dirtier. “What, I’m supposed to leave it out here so you can paw through it again?”

“I’m done pawing through it. I already got rid of the stuff you can’t have.”

Instead of coming to the table, she collapsed face down on the bed and closed her eyes. Her hair was a tousled, wavy mess now that it wasn’t tamed into those silly dreadlocks. The sun fell across the bed, slanting over the sinfully round ass showcased by the world’s sexiest jeans.

I want to be slanting over that ass. I want to be inside it.

Fuck. Ransom, really. That’s enough.

“When did you eat last?” he asked aloud.

She didn’t open her eyes. “I don’t know. I had something before last night’s set.”

“Come have something to eat, then.”

“I want to sleep. Leave me alone.”

Ransom usually tried to give women what they wanted, but in this case, he couldn’t.

“Here’s how this is going to go,” he said in a firm, direct voice. “I have a job to do here. So when I tell you to eat, you’re going to eat, whether you feel hungry or not. When I tell you to sleep, you’re going to sleep.”

“Are you going to tell me when to blink and breathe too?” she murmured, stretching and arching her back.

Was she trying to seduce him? Or was she just naturally, horribly provocative? He pretended to be unaffected. “Get up and eat something. Don’t make me shove it down your throat. You only have a day or so to get yourself straightened out for the next set.”