In Bed with the Bodyguard (21 page)

Romance author Lynne Silver writes the popular Coded for Love series and other hot contemporary romance novels, such as
Love, Technically
. Before writing romance, she wrote fiction of a different sort, drafting press releases for technology corporations. Washington, D.C., is her home (non)state, where she resides with her husband and two sons.

Hot Nights with the Fireman

FBI Cyber Attack Team Office, Washington, D.C., Present Day

 

T
he invitation to hell popped into Sam's personal email in-box two minutes before he was headed to lunch. His appetite jumped ship as fast as a puppy went after a tennis ball. How had they even gotten his email address? As far as he knew, he'd left his prep school days behind with no plans to return. Ever. Not even for his ten-year reunion.

Agent Suarez stuck his head into the doorway. “Cooper, you ready to go?” Sam looked up from his screen. Suarez stepped fully into the office. “Need a rain check?”

“No, why?” Sam asked.

“You look like my pregnant wife does every morning before she loses her midnight snack. Need a bucket?” Jack bent to lift the small trash can in the corner and thrust it toward Sam, who recoiled.

“I'm not going to vomit. Put my trash can down.” He rose and grabbed his jacket. “Let's go.”

As the men wound through the maze of cubicles and private offices toward the exit, Jack asked, “What put that look on your face? Work or personal?”

Sam unconsciously patted the phone in his pocket. “I got an email invitation to my ten-year high school reunion.”

“So?” Jack asked. “What's terrible about that? No date, and you want a hot woman on your arm?”

He swallowed, hating to even dwell on his teen years. “I was kind of a loser in high school. Those were not remotely the best years of my life, and I have no desire to rehash them with a bunch of people who ignored me then and haven't made an effort to contact me since.”

Jack clapped him on the back. “Got news for you, Cooper. We work in the cyber security division of the FBI. We were all losers in high school.”

Sam laughed, because it was true. He worked with a bunch of computer geeks. Granted, they were now computer geeks who carried weapons and had the right to arrest bad guys, which upped their cool factor. “At least I've grown an inch or seven since high school.”

“Late growth spurt?” Jack asked.

“I was five-five until my freshman year of college. I had to essentially buy a new wardrobe overnight.”

“I wish that had happened to me.” Jack said almost wistfully, and Sam glanced down at his partner, who was five-nine on a good day. “If I were suddenly six feet tall and now an FBI agent, I'd go back to my high school reunion and rub it in the faces of every person who was ever mean to me.” Jack glanced over at Sam and correctly read the expression on his face. “Not going to happen, huh?”

“Never. There were a handful of friends from school who were cool, and I still keep in touch with them.”

“Like the infamous Arianna Rose?” Jack asked with a knowing laugh. It was common knowledge around the office that Sam had gone to high school with the year's biggest scandal in America. Arianna Rose's father had operated a Ponzi scheme to rival Bernie Madoff's and then fled the country, leaving Arianna as the public and only face of the Rose family.

“Yes, like Arianna,” Sam replied, still a little sensitive about the ribbing he'd taken for months for defending his flighty but trustworthy friend. Luckily, Arianna had lived up to his trust and helped the authorities track down her father. “There aren't that many other people from Montgomery Prep that I want or need to see again.”

“What about your girl crush? Don't you want see if she put on the freshman fifty? Rub it in her face what she missed out on?”

“Fifteen,” Sam corrected. “I believe the correct term is freshman fifteen.”

“I know, but in her case, you're hoping for fifty.”

Sam froze silently in front of the elevator bay. His girl crush had never put on the freshman fifteen. She'd kept her killer body all through high school, college, and still had it. At least she had last time Sam had stalked her on social media. “No. She knows exactly what she missed out on and isn't mourning for a second. No high school reunion for me.”

Montgomery Preparatory School, 2001

 

“
Welcome, new freshmen, to Montgomery Prep. Thank you for giving up your last day of summer break to come get oriented.” A tall, austere woman stood in front of the classroom addressing the thirty or so fourteen-year-olds who were sitting as far back in the room as they could. The front row remained empty. Sam had arrived slightly early, and, not quite understanding the social dynamics his peers seemed to intuit, had sat in the second row, center
desk, then watched in dismay as all the other kids shuffled in, finding seats in the last row and working their way up.

“
Don't get too comfortable,” the woman continued. They'd been told that she was Ms. Reamer, their freshman coach, but not like a PE coach. Sam had never heard of a coach who didn't do sports. Already things were weirdly different from his public middle school. “I'm going to ask you all to stand up and we're going to get started on the first activity to help us all get to know one another.”

Uneasily the kids looked around at each other, no one wanting to be the first to stand. Ms. Reamer approached the front corner desk and said loudly, “Don't all stand at once.” She smiled as if she were the school's version of Chris Rock. “To get to know one another, you're going to arrange yourselves in alphabetical order by first name and reseat yourselves starting at this front desk. You have four minutes. Go.”

There was a mad scramble and a cacophony of blurted names as the kids raced, eager to accomplish their first task at their new school and prove they were worthy of being students at what was considered the best private college preparatory school in the Metro D.C. region.

They bumped into each other and shouted their names, trying to figure out which desk would be their own. Sam hated stuff like this and hoped this wasn't a precursor to the next four years. There were at least six different better ways to approach this task, yet they all insisted on acting like imbeciles. Why wasn't someone taking charge? Why wasn't he?

“
Two minutes,” Ms. Reamer called, and a moment of panicked silence fell before the chaos rose again. They spent the next two minutes trying to get themselves seated properly until “Time!” The final two kids standing made a mad dash for seats.

A hush fell over the now slightly sweaty occupants of the room, but they were fourteen— BO was one of those sorry facts of life.

“
Not bad,” Ms. Reamer said, standing at the front. “But not great, either. Let's check your work.” She pointed to the front corner desk. “Name.”

“
Alex.”

“
Amanda.”

They continued down the rows until a red-faced Erica and Eric had to swap seats. Holy crap, how was that Eric kid only in ninth grade? He looked like a senior. Junior at the minimum. Sam tried to memorize as many names and faces as he could, but being in the last row now had its disadvantages.

When the last kids had said their names, Ms. Reamer said, “One of the things you will learn during your years at Montgomery Prep is teamwork and leadership. I didn't see either of those things happening during that exercise. What was something you could've done to expedite the process?”

Sam raised his hand while a lot of his new classmates were visibly trying to define “expedite.” But he didn't get called on. Instead, Eric called out, “Name tags,” hoping to get a laugh. Sam inwardly groaned. The guy was big and thought he was a comedian.

“
That's an idea,” Ms. Reamer answered diplomatically. “Any other ideas?”

Sam raised his hand again, but a girl with long, straight reddish-blond hair seated near the front answered. “We could've divided the room into three sections. A through H up front, I to O in the middle, and P to Z in back. Then from there, if we'd said our names one at a time in the group, it would've gone faster.”

“
Excellent idea, Casey. So good, I think we'll try it. But this time, we'll alphabetize by last name, and the Z's will start us off in front and work toward the A's in the back.”

Ms. Reamer barely had the words “Ready, go” off her tongue before the new freshmen were out of their seats and scrambling to get themselves in the right seats.

Sam stayed where he was and was pleased when the take-charge girl, Casey, headed toward him. About seven kids huddled in the last row, and when Casey pointed at them, they said their last names and stood on either the left or right of the person who'd gone before, depending on their last name. It was much faster and less chaotic than the first go-round, but still tricky because last name spellings were more complicated than first names.

“
Cooper,” Sam said, and Casey, whom he now noticed was extremely pretty, grinned.

“
Me too,” she said.

“
Ooh, you'll have to sit on his lap,” Eric, whose last name was Cohen, said.

“
You'll never work in a library,” Casey informed him. “First name?” she asked Sam.

“
Sam, Sam Cooper. So you'll be on my left.” He shifted over to make room for the redhead, or maybe her hair was blond. He couldn't exactly pick one color, as every time the light hit it or she turned, the strands of her hair looked blonder or redder.

“
I like the lap option,” Eric said, who was on Casey's left. He patted his own. “You could sit on mine.”

Casey ignored him and turned to Sam, who couldn't take his gaze off her. She was so much prettier than any girl in his old school. He racked his brain trying to think of something clever to say, but was interrupted.

“
Done,” Ms. Reamer announced. “Two minutes, seven seconds. Excellent work.” They all sat a little straighter, decidedly pleased with themselves. “Enjoy these seats: you'll be here for the rest of the day.”

They spent the rest of the day playing games and going over school rules. For most of the activities they had to pair up with the person sitting next to them, and for Sam it was Casey Cooper. She was nice. Way nicer than he expected a girl with her looks to be. By the end of the day, they were exchanging jokes and sly sideways smiles whenever Eric made a boneheaded comment. There were a lot of smiles.

Sam went home from orientation psyched for the first day of school in a new place where he already had a friend. He came home on the second day of school friendless.

Montgomery Prep, Present Day

  

Casey Cooper hung up her handset on her pristine desk knowing she had a frown and that it was going to cause a headache if she couldn't relax her facial muscles. Or maybe it was that she'd neglected to put on the glasses that the doctor claimed she needed if she was going to be staring at computer screens and small print documents all day, every day. Whatever. Doctors didn't know everything.

As cute as her glasses were, they didn't project the image she wanted and therefore they disappeared into a drawer whenever she had an in-person meeting with a potential big donor to Montgomery Prep. She'd given a newly elected congresswoman and her children a tour of the school this morning along with the director of admissions. Not the usual protocol, but here in the nation's capital, certain things needed a little finessing. The type of finesse at which she was an expert.

After the tour, she'd returned to her office to check on the RSVPs for the various reunion invitations that had gone out that morning. She'd been pleased to see a handful had trickled in for the class celebrating their twenty-year reunion and one or two positive responses for the ten-year reunion, her own class reunion.

Annie, Casey's assistant, poked her head through the doorway. “What do you think? Are they going to write the check?” Annie had only been in her employ for six months, but Casey knew it was going to work and had plans to groom Annie to blossom under her tutelage. Lucky girl.

“I think so.” She crossed her fingers and held them up in one of the girlish moves she was so good at faking. Back when she'd been queen bee of this school, she hadn't earned that position haphazardly. It had taken study; it had taken work. One of the things she'd learned was that people responded to girlish confidence and playfulness. People wanted to be around the fun girl. And so, dammit, Casey was fun.

“Any new RSVPs?” Annie asked.

“One. Did the decorator call back yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Give her three more hours, then we're on to the next one.”

Annie looked at her wide-eyed.

“What?” She couldn't afford to lose yet another assistant, she mentally reminded herself, or the school would start to look at her as if she was difficult. She wasn't difficult; she had high standards and required anyone who worked with her meet those standards.

“We only sent out the request for proposal this morning. Maybe we should give at least twenty-four hours?” Annie asked.

“We give a lot of business to them. The least they could do is return our calls in a timely manner.”

Annie stared at her a beat, then released a breath and glued a smile back on her face. “All right. I'll send another email and queue up the next potential vendor.”

As soon as Annie's back was turned, Casey released her own breath. Annie had a point. A quality decorator would be working and couldn't immediately return her call with a proposal. She didn't want to deal with a decorator who had hours to sit around waiting for a job, and she also didn't want to deal with a bigger corporate company who had admin after admin on staff answering phones. She wanted—no, needed—the personal touch for the upcoming reunion.

She'd been back at her high school as an employee for a year and a half since moving from another, less prestigious, private school in Atlanta. In her short tenure, she'd pulled in some big donations, but she wanted to lay a foundation for big donors and huge participation from the alumni. Montgomery Prep only had thirty percent donation rates from their alumni. Thirty percent! That was unacceptable to Casey. She'd heard of some private schools in the area that had ninety percent. Which meant that Casey was going for one hundred percent.