The Alpha Bodyguards Books #4-6

Chapter Twelve

H ating doing dishes almost as much as I hated doing laundry, I grabbed my cell, picked out some music, then put my phone in the docking station. Loud-as-fuck old-school rock filled the kitchen.

I was elbow deep in the soapy, water-filled kitchen sink scrubbing the lasagna pan when the music abruptly stopped.

Cursing, I looked up.

A figure stepped from the shadows of the dark living room.

Jumping out of my fucking skin, I dropped the pan, and water sloshed everywhere.

Dressed in a T-shirt and cargo shorts, Preston scanned the kitchen. “You should lock your front door.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.” Pressing a wet hand to my chest, too late I realized my mistake. “You scared the shit out of me.” And fuck me, had I ever seen Preston in shorts? Even his legs were inked. His whole damn perfect muscled body was inked. From neck to… ankles. Maybe to toes. I didn’t know. He was wearing tennis shoes, and I’d never seen him barefoot, let alone dressed so casual.

His not-blue-but-not-green eyes cut to my chest. “You’re lucky I’m not someone else.”

Doubtful. “Am I?” Was there any place on his body not inked?

He didn’t answer. Avoiding eye contact like he did with most every other person besides me and Ty and Nash, Preston made a cursory glance around the living room. And even though his gaze quickly moved on, I knew he’d probably catalogued every object in detail in the one glance. My brother wasn’t the only one who’d come home from Afghanistan different.

“Ty’s not here,” I offered.

“He left with Nash in your car to get you gas.”

I frowned, then read between the lines. “Did you talk to him?” If he had, he wouldn’t have come in. Ty would’ve stopped him. He hated when Preston was around me.

On the surface, I got it. Preston Vos wasn’t… normal. But who the fuck was normal? No one I knew. But there was more to it than that. Ever since Ty and Preston had gotten out of the Marines, Ty didn’t bring Preston around. In fact, he’d never brought him over again, not since that one time seven years ago. I’d asked Ty a few times if he wanted to invite Preston to our Saturday night dinners, but Ty had adamantly refused and warned me to stay away from him.

I’d stopped pressing the issue, but that didn’t mean I never saw Preston.

I did.

A lot.

Once a week for the past five years.

I would see him on my way home from a late shift, always in a different vehicle. He’d follow me home, wait until I got inside, then drive off. If I waved, he’d tip his chin. Sometimes he’d show up where I was, like the coffee place where I got my caffeine fix before my shifts. He’d walk in behind me, pay for my drink, sometimes say something, sometimes not, then leave. Or he’d show up in the hospital cafeteria and buy my lunch. Sometimes when I ventured to the café across the street from the hospital, he’d show up there and pay for my sandwich.

Once a week, I treated myself to a cupcake at a local bakery, and after the first month, they never charged me, saying it was taken care of. He’d also shown up at the grocery store, the farmers’ market and even once at a gas station. He’d pulled in behind me and told me to drive to the air pump station. Then he’d put air in my tires before leaving without another word.

But he never showed up if I was with Nash, and he never asked me out. I knew he knew I’d slept with Sam that night, and God forgive me, I wished like hell Nash was Preston’s son, but he wasn’t, and I couldn’t change a damn thing.

After the first few times he’d started showing up, I’d dared to ask him to dinner.

He’d frowned and muttered under his breath “ Seventeen minutes. ” Then he’d walked out.

I’d never asked again, and Preston Vos became my silent guardian.

Or maybe it was all in my head.

Because the tattooed, muscled man in my living room didn’t look like someone who watched out for other people. He looked scary as fuck.

Preston glanced at my legs, then my shorts. “No, I didn’t talk to Ty tonight.”

I waited to see if he’d tell me why he was here, but he didn’t elaborate. He never did.

His gaze cut from my soaked white tank top to the stove. “Your mother’s lasagna?”

I didn’t know how the fuck he knew what I’d made for dinner or how he knew it was a family recipe. I’d never told him about my mother’s lasagna. I’d never told him anything about my life. But that didn’t mean he didn’t know practically everything.

Every single time I’d run into Preston, his method of conversation, if he spoke, entailed a statement of fact about a small detail in my life. Usually something like, new shirt, your hair is shorter, you didn’t get a tuna melt, and my personal favorite was last week in the coffee shop.

He’d come up behind me as I was putting too much cream in my coffee, and before I could register it was him, he’d tucked my hair my behind my ear, stating, “You’re tired. You work too many hours . ” I’d jumped out of my skin and spilled my coffee. Quick as lightning, he’d pulled me back from the mess before it leaked onto my scrubs. Then he’d bought me a new coffee, put the cream in himself, handed it to me and left without with another word. I hadn’t seen him since.

But now he was standing in my kitchen.

Somewhere he hadn’t been in seven years.

I crossed my arms. “Is this going to be another one of your random visits where you show up, drop a cryptic comment, then disappear again?” Because maybe I was getting tired of this. Maybe I needed to finally tell him to back off. Every time I saw him, it sent me into a tailspin of regret and useless want that took me a day to recover.

He scanned the dishes still on the table. “I don’t disappear.”

“Yeah? Then where did you go last week after you made me spill my coffee? In fact, why were you there in the first place? You didn’t get a coffee. You never get coffee. You never do a lot of shit. Like buy your own groceries or get yourself a sandwich or even join me for lunch.” The words started spilling out, and I couldn’t stop them.

“I never know what you’re up to. For all I know, you could’ve been on a date before you showed up here tonight. One that went south so you decided to come here instead, see what your current favorite stalking subject was up to. Is that it?” I threw my hands up.

“I don’t date.” He didn’t even make eye contact.

I stupidly kept going. “Then where were you tonight before you decided to waltz in here?” Not like I had a right to ask, but goddamn it, I was suddenly feeling entitled to an explanation if he was going to stand in my kitchen after seven years and look at my wet tank top.

He ran a finger along the edge of the island counter separating us. “I wasn’t invited to dinner.”

Every muscle in my body went still. “Did you want to be invited?” He’d turned me down years ago. Would he even eat if I invited him?

“I would eat a meal with you.”

The hair on the back of my neck rose, but another reaction, altogether unwelcome, fluttered my stomach. “You can read minds now?”

In a rare switch from his usual behavior, his head snapped up, his eyes met mine, and he stared. Hard .

But he didn’t say a damn thing.

Ice raced up my spine but heat colored my cheeks before traveling south, way south. I swallowed. “You’re looking at me.”

More than usual, his voice quieted. “I always look at you.”

“But you don’t see me.” If he did, if he really saw me, he would’ve stayed for coffee one of those times in the coffee shop. He would’ve joined me for lunch at the café. He would’ve asked me to dinner in the grocery store. But he didn’t. He didn’t see me. All he saw was the mistake I made seven years ago.

The deep quiet to his voice turned into something else, something fierce. “I see you.”

The heat in my body every time I saw him morphed into fire, and I didn’t know who I hated more, him, me, or my nonexistent sex life. “No, you don’t.”

He came closer without seeming to move. His eyes—stark, intense, terrifying—they inched across my face too slow but too briefly. Then he tilted everything in the room sideways. “I can’t touch you.”

Four words. Not spoken, but breathed, like they needed life.

My breath caught in my lungs, and I dared to ask. “Why?”

Frustration etched across the sharp angles of his features, and he looked away. “Timing.”

What a joke. “You and I don’t know the meaning of good timing.” My body betraying me, I leaned toward him. “But that didn’t stop you before. You kissed me once.” Seven long years ago.

His gaze landed on my lips. “I’ve paid for it every day since.”

Hurt crushed me from the inside, and traitorous tears sprang.

I wanted to scream.

No, I wanted to hit, punch and scream because that was what this man did to me, what he always did to me. Every time I laid eyes on him, I wanted him, but I couldn’t have him. He was crazy, and I’d probably contributed to that, but I was a mother now, and this whole exchange, like every other time I’d ever laid eyes on him, was insane because that’s who he was.

Preston Vos, off-kilter, off board, offside, off, off, off .

But who the fuck was I to judge? I was a shell of a human being pretending I knew how to single parent my deaf son. And I pathetically pretended I didn’t wait to see him every week. I even pretended I’d wanted to go on the few horrible dates I’d had over the years.

Who was the joke now?

Nothing left to lose, my mouth opened and words came out. “How long are you going to keep doing this to me?”

Eye shift, controlled inhale, he moved closer. “Not much longer.”

Captured in too-short encounters over the years, his scent was as familiar as breathing but as foreign as a snowy winter night as it surrounded me with physically painful longing.

Panic rose. “What does that mean?” He was going to disappear forever? If he was, I couldn’t be a part of this anymore. I couldn’t wait around for him to leave. This was already killing me. I couldn’t breathe for want when he came near me.

“Desperation is a choice.” His biceps bulged his black T-shirt, just like they always bulged the black polos with the logo insignia of his and Ty’s boss’s company that he was usually wearing when I saw him.

He looked out of place in the T-shirt, the same way he looked out of place in pressed and fitted polo shirts, because Preston looked out of place everywhere and in any kind of clothing. Six feet five inches of solid, ripped muscles you couldn’t get from just a gym, he’d tattooed every inch of skin I could see, and not for the first time, I ached to see the rest of him.

Craving to touch him, my nails dug into my palms.

I wanted to know why he’d inked himself so thoroughly.

I wanted to know why he rarely made eye contact anymore.

I wanted to know why he’d been leaving a daisy on my doorstep every Mother’s Day, every birthday, and every Easter for the past five years. I wanted to know why he followed me home on nights I worked late. I wanted to know why he religiously kept this distance between us but never went long enough between sightings so that I would think he was gone.

Because he was never gone.

Like a sentry, he kept watching me.

But now he was saying he wasn’t going to do that much longer.

That wasn’t desperate behavior.

That was crazy.

“You’re not desperate, but you’re acting insane.”

His gaze flicked to the front door as his right hand shot out. Seemingly aimlessly, and without looking, he straightened my grocery list, aligning it perpendicular to the edge of the counter. “It serves its purpose.”

I watched his large, inked hand with his graceful fingers drop to his side. “Crazy has a purpose?”

His fingers drummed once against his thigh. “Where you’re concerned, everything has a purpose.”

I… Jesus.

What the fuck was I supposed to say to that?

Suddenly, I felt as lost as this conversation. “I’m tired, Preston. Go home. Or don’t. I’m done giving a damn. And for the record, daisies are not my favorite flower.” Weary, bitchy, I shoved around him and aimed for my bedroom. “Lock the door on your way out.” I needed a new shirt and a new life.

Before I’d made it one step, he moved.