Guarded Hearts (Little Falls #4)

1. Chapter One

Chapter One

Pasha

I was surrounded by women. On either side of me in the nightclub’s VIP booth were dancers from Mia Malone’s Mending Hearts Tour.

The cloying smell of perfume and body lotion clung to the air.

I took a long pull from my pint of beer.

While being at the nightclub wasn’t my first choice, the front-row seat to the dance floor was a great view and endless entertainment. Drunk people did foolish things.

“I can’t believe Mia finally let you come out with us.

We all had bets on whether you were a monk or a priest or something.

Or whether she gave you twenty-four-hour bodyguard pay.

” Jazz, one of Mia’s dancers, giggled beside me and sipped her fruity drink.

She flipped her long dark hair over her shoulder.

She was my least favorite, constantly prodding me to speak to her, rarely saying anything of interest. Mia had hired an English tutor for me, and apart from my Russian accent, my English had become fluid most of the time.

She’d grown tired of using various translation apps or listening to me talk in stilted or broken sentences that didn’t keep their meanings.

And honestly, it’d been frustrating for me, too—to never be completely understood.

The tutor had been a gift I gladly accepted.

Now, I could speak about a variety of topics, but I chose not to most of the time. I’d earned a reputation as a man of few words. The dancers sometimes thought I couldn’t hear rather than that I couldn’t speak, and the gossip ran thick.

While I could speak more English words than I ever expected, I tended to save them for Mia or Tyler or baby Victoria. They were my adopted American family.

This was the only drink I’d have tonight.

While the Sullivan-Malone family were safe with Gerald and the other security personnel back on the tour buses, as the head of her security in my early thirties, I bore the weight of responsibility.

Getting drunk in a bar wasn’t part of my job description, even if Mia insisted I needed to blow off some steam .

Whatever that meant. Some of her common English phrases were lost to me.

Sometimes I searched them online, and sometimes I tried to interpret them through context, and sometimes I let the meaning be implied instead of completely understood.

“I don’t think he wants to talk to you,” Amy, another dancer, said from my other side. “Maybe you can lure some poor sucker with your sick moves on the dance floor.”

Jazz removed the straw from her drink and chugged the last of the icy concoction before leaving the booth with a huff.

I sighed. It was one thing to not speak to her, but it was another for Amy to hurt Jazz’s feelings. Not that Amy’s comment would matter in a few minutes. Jazz’s middle name was persistence. She’d be snuggled up next to me with a new drink before the next song started.

If I thought Jazz could be a one-and-done woman, I’d consider having sex with her.

Maybe we’d get a bit of satisfaction, but I never did anything to jeopardize my job, my position in Mia’s security detail.

No excessive drinking, no sex with her dancers.

I didn’t want complications. Certainly not romantic ones .

“Jesus, I’m hot.” Another dancer took Jazz’s vacated spot. She grabbed one of the ice cubes from the abandoned glass and rubbed it across her chest, letting the water run into her sparkly shirt.

My pants tightened involuntarily. Would some of the juice from the drink linger on the ice cube? Make her skin sticky sweet?

Alyssa Miller.

Unlike Jazz, Alyssa was my favorite. Her dark blond hair fell in thick waves down her back. Tall and lithe, she glided across any floor. There was a natural grace to her, as though she’d been born knowing the easiest and most flattering way to move through the world.

From the first moment I’d seen her, I’d been secretly obsessed. Other than Amy, she was the only returning dancer from the Blind Faith Tour. When I asked Mia about her rotating door of performers, Mia said it was a different tour with different ideas, and not all people could do all things.

Alyssa, who’d been better than average to make the first tour, had to be phenomenal to get a second shot.

I didn’t understand the intricacies of dance, but when she was on the stage, I never wanted to look anywhere else.

When she was around, I had to work to keep my adoration a secret. She was a complication.

Now, sitting beside her in a nightclub lit up by strobe lights and a disco ball, I realized she wasn’t just a good dancer—she could do amazing things with an ice cube.

Another trickle of water ran between her breasts and drew my gaze like a magnet, although I tried to pretend I didn’t notice. One part of my body was paying attention, and leaving this booth or standing up was impossible, even if I wasn’t surrounded .

I hadn’t been so drawn to another person in a long time—well, only one other time. Zoya. We’d almost gotten married, and the reminder brought a momentary slice of sadness. Even with her, had the attraction ever been like this ?

Alyssa leaned across me, practically falling into my lap to talk to Amy, whose pixie cut hair was fire engine red.

Alyssa’s hand gripped my thigh, and I tensed, not at the contact so much as how my body reacted to her proximity.

She smelled like warm vanilla and flowers, which felt like the most lethal combination.

The spike of desire was an attack on my senses.

As she finished her conversation with Amy, she eased back and looked at me under her lashes.

Did she know the effect she was having? Could she sense it?

The nerve endings in my body were poised to react, to pin her to the booth, to drag her into the backroom, to haul her onto the table.

I’d give almost anything for a taste. The ferocity of my need was an unwelcome surprise, an impulse I could never act on.

“Sorry,” she said. “I think I’m a bit drunk.”

“Just a bit?” I murmured, and we made eye contact. Her eyes were brown, a rich, deep color that made my gut clench. Soulful. That was what I called them. So different from my pale blue.

A grin split her face, and she held up one finger. “Back in a sec.” She scooted out of the booth and raced over to Jazz on the dance floor and held out her hand. Alyssa’s gold mini dress had ridden up her thighs, and she tugged it down while she waited.

Jazz frowned and stared in my direction for a moment before removing some bills from her bra and passing them to Alyssa. I took another drink of my beer. Odd. Very odd .

When she returned, she sat next to me and patted my leg. “You just got me twenty bucks. Want me to buy you a drink?”

“Twenty bucks?”

“Yeah.” She selected another ice cube and ran it along her arm. “Because you spoke more than one word to me. Jazz said you only spoke in one-word sentences, and I bet her I could get you to say at least three. Bingo-bango.” She pretended to beat on a drum.

“How much for five words?” The joy spilling out of her was contagious.

I’d never spoken to her before, but the music of her voice was familiar.

On the last tour, I heard her talking to her boyfriend on the phone backstage—lovesick or furious.

Those had been her two moods. This playful vibe was new, reminded me of when she came off stage at the end of the night, relaxed, happy.

Drunk on the high of the crowd. Tonight, she was just drunk.

Alyssa laughed and bumped my shoulder. “Next time, I’ll bet her ten dollars per word. We’d probably have to record the conversation. Nobody would believe me.” She laced her fingers with mine and tugged me out of the booth behind her, practically dragging me toward the bar. “I owe you a drink.”

“No, no, no.” I tried to extract my hand, but she hung on, and when we got to the bar, she looped my arm around her back, so she was pinned between my body and the wooden surface.

“One shot,” she said, holding up a finger, her eyes alight with mischief. “Just one. What’s the harm?”

I shook my head, but when she turned in my arms and ordered two shots of vodka from the very attentive bartender, I was a goner.

Something about her spoke to me, or at least to my body in a way I didn’t want to deny, not just yet.

Being the focus of her attention was new, unexpected, thrilling. Dangerous .

“If I drink both of these,” she said, dangling the two shots from her fingertips. “I’ll be too drunk, and I’ll have a massive hangover tomorrow. But if you drink one of them, you’ll be saving me.” She batted her eyelashes and grinned.

I took the shot from her fingers and cupped it in my hand.

Peer pressure never worked. Without looking, I tossed the liquid over my shoulder.

Would someone get doused with alcohol? Possibly.

Most of the people in the VIP section were already out of their mind on something.

A vodka shower added to the party. Besides, I’d have no problem taking care of myself if someone was pissed off.

She scoffed and then burst out laughing. “Hey, that’s my hard-earned money you’re throwing over your shoulder.”

“No,” I said. “It was your hangover.”

Alyssa eyed me above the rim of her shot and then swallowed the liquid. She waved to the bartender without looking, and he slid another vodka across the bar toward her as though they’d done this dance before.

When I glanced down, she smirked. “I’m not nearly that drunk yet.”

“Quit while you’re ahead?” An expression I learned from Mia, although I had to ask her to explain it the first time.

“You know, everyone says your English isn’t great. But, apart from an accent, which, personally”—she put the hand not holding the shot on her chest—“I find incredibly sexy. You speak really well. Why don’t you talk more?”

Instead of answering, I plucked the shot glass out of her fingers and drank its contents. Take the edge off .