Kidnapped By the Mountain Man Bodyguard (Mountain Man Bodyguard Protector #7)

Chapter One

LONDON

THE RING LIGHT WAS doing its job.

Sebastian had put my extensions in four days ago for the Paramount premiere — three hours in his chair, a color refresh, and a blowout that made me look like I’d stepped off a yacht in the south of France, which I had not, but that was the entire point of good hair.

The premiere had been a triumph. I’d worn the Valentino, worked the carpet, smiled for every photographer on the press line and the paparazzi stacked six deep behind the barriers, because that was just Tuesday in my life.

The after-party had been even better documented.

Technically off the record, which in practice meant more paparazzi, no publicist telling anyone to put their phones away, and significantly more interesting angles.

The Daily Mail went with “Heiress Gone Wild: London Grant and Mystery Man Set After-Party Ablaze.” Page Six was less poetic.

TMZ simply posted the video, which I thought showed excellent range.

Twelve million views by noon. My best week in six months.

I was arranging three green juices on the Carrara marble island for a flat lay — Bree, my personal assistant, had my morning calendar blocked through eleven — when my phone rang.

THE MANAGEMENT on the screen.

I let it ring twice. On principle. Then I picked up.

“Hi, Daddy.”

“London.” No hello back. Warren Grant didn’t believe in hellos. He believed in directives, quarterly earnings, and the certainty that I was a PR crisis in Prada. “I’ve spoken to legal.”

This was never a good opening.

“There’s a sensitivity around the Harrington merger,” he said. “I need you out of the tabloids for the next two weeks.”

“I’m barely in the tabloids.”

“Three publications this morning.”

“The Daily Mail isn’t a publication, it’s a mood board for people who want to feel superior to strangers. And the Page Six thing was completely out of context — Gregory and I were just—”

“I don’t need the context.”

“I’m sending someone to handle your public presence,” he said. “He’ll be at your door at ten. You’re not to leave without him.”

I considered the juices. Then the ring light. Then the penthouse — custom furnished, windows floor to ceiling, forty floors of Los Angeles laid out below me — and thought: a babysitter. My father was sending me a babysitter.

“Of course, Daddy,” I said.

My father had been issuing directives since 1998 with a perfect track record of believing they’d been received. I had an equally perfect track record of receiving them on my own terms.

I had until ten o’clock.

Corporate handlers were, in my experience, a very familiar category of person.

Smooth, forgettable, ambitious in the specific way of someone who genuinely cared what my father thought of him.

Thirty minutes, charm offensive, he’d be eating out of my hand before the elevator arrived.

I had done this before. I was excellent at it.

I went to change.

The silk slip was fine for content. For a negotiation I needed something with more range.

I found the Zimmermann — the good one, the one that photographed like a dream and landed differently in person — and put it on.

Lip gloss. One spritz of the perfume that had arrived last month with a very sincere note from a brand whose name I wasn’t yet at liberty to share because the partnership wasn’t finalized, and which smelled like money had learned to apologize.

I was ready by nine fifty-eight.

THE BABYSITTER WAS not what I expected.

I opened the door with my best version of warm and collaborative already in place — the smile that made photographers add ten minutes to a shoot, the posture, the general impression of someone who was very happy to see you and also always arrived like this.

What I got was six-foot-four of former something — military, I was fairly certain, from the way he took in the doorframe like he was solving for its structural load — with dark hair slightly too long and a jaw that made my next breath arrive a full beat late.

He was wearing worn dark jeans, a canvas overshirt, and boots that had seen actual terrain.

He swept the room in one pass — ring light, marble, forty floors of window — and his eyes came back to mine with no verdict in them whatsoever.

I already had my phone in my hand, which told me something about my nerves I chose to ignore.

“London Grant,” he said, like he was reading off a list.

“Obviously,” I said.

He held out his hand, palm up.

I considered it. “If this is a handshake situation I should warn you I’m a hugger.”

“Your phone.”

“That’s a no.” I turned to face him fully.

“My phone is my job. Two million people have voluntarily elected to follow my daily existence, which makes it less of a personal device and more of a public utility. There are active conversations in progress, Bree runs my calendar off that number, and if I don’t post in the next four hours my engagement metrics enter a decline that takes six to eight weeks to—”

My phone was in his jacket pocket before I finished the sentence. I didn’t see him move.

“I’m Rafe Coulter,” he said, as though that were a perfectly normal thing that had just happened. “We’re leaving the city today.”

I stared at him. “I have a fitting at two. I have a lunch that’s been in my calendar for three weeks.

I have a brand partnership call at four that represents a meaningful percentage of my quarterly income, and I have Sebastian booked for Thursday because I have an appearance Thursday night and if you think a merger sensitivity is a problem, you have absolutely no idea what Sebastian does to people who waste his time. ”

Rafe Coulter waited. Patient, entirely unmoved.

I tried a different approach. “What if I stayed in the hotel? My hotel, full security on site, no appearances, no tabloids. You could sit in the lobby. We have excellent coffee.”

“No.”

Not a negotiating-position no. A weather-report no.

“A modified schedule, then. I cancel the low-visibility events, keep the three I genuinely need, Bree coordinates everything with you in advance. You know where I am at all times, you approve each appearance.” I spread my hands. “It’s a better arrangement than what you currently have.”

“No.”

“Your contract is with my father,” I said. “Not with me. I’m twenty-six years old with legal autonomy and no documented history of requiring supervision, which is more than I can say for several of my acquaintances.”

“I spoke with your father this morning,” Rafe said. “Pack a bag.”

I walked to the kitchen and picked up the handset on the wall — the hotel suite line, which I never used because I always had my phone, except for right now — and dialed my father’s cell from memory.

He picked up on the first ring, which meant he’d been waiting.

“Your man is refusing to cooperate,” I said.

“Good.”

“Daddy, he took my phone.”

“He has my full confidence.”

“That is catastrophically misplaced. You once told a room full of shareholders I was between projects when what I was actually doing was recovering from a parasailing incident in Mykonos — with someone whose name I’m not at liberty to share, though I’ll tell you his last name ends in Caprio — that required minor surgery.

You are not a reliable narrator of situations involving me. ”

“I have a board call.”

He ended the call. I set the handset down and turned to find Rafe watching me from across the marble island — patient, unhurried, arms crossed — with the kind of face that had no business being attached to someone sent to ruin my week.

I went to the kitchen drawer and retrieved the emergency envelope — not because I used cash, but because my mother had once told me a lady always kept emergency funds on hand, and I had interpreted that very liberally over the years, which meant I had three thousand dollars in hundreds for reasons I could no longer fully reconstruct.

I placed it on the Carrara marble between us with what I felt was a reasonable air of let’s be adults about this.

He considered the envelope. Then me. His expression was not contemptuous — it was the specific look of someone who had been offered something they had genuinely no use for and was working out the most considerate way to communicate this.

“Ready?” he said.

I packed for Napa. My father’s crisis-management playbook had exactly one move: vanish someone to a vineyard, enforce a mandatory digital detox, and call it strategic recovery. I had been, on at least two prior occasions, the reason for this exact playbook. I knew the drill.

The good sunglasses. The string bikinis.

The silk blouses. The heels I’d need if there were any dinners worth attending — two pairs, because there would be, and I packed for both.

A jewelry roll, the dry shampoo I’d curated over eighteen months of trial and error, and the Gucci sunglasses as backup.

Two rolling bags, a tote, and a small clutch with a strap, which counted as functional by any reasonable standard.

Rafe regarded the assembled luggage, shook his head, and said “one bag.”

He went through the large rolling bag with surgical focus, moving items to the bed: both pairs of heels, the silk blouses, the jewelry roll, the backup sunglasses, the dry shampoo, the string bikinis. He kept the basics.

“Those are the Gianvito Rossis,” I said, as the first pair of heels landed on the bed. “I need those for dinners.”

“One pair of flats.”

“One pair of— there are no flats in this bag. These are travel heels, not statement heels. The distinction is important and if you would just hold on for one second—”

He had already moved to the tote. He reached in and came up with the hot pink Jimmy Choos I’d wedged sideways under a scarf — which I had not been attempting to conceal, I had simply packed them in a creative configuration.

He held them up alongside the Gianvito Rossis and considered both pairs with the focus of someone making a genuinely important assessment.