One
Than
Prying one eye open, I stared at the ceiling. Where was I? That wasn’t my ceiling. The noise that had broken into my dream started up again, and I winced. What the fuck was that? I’d been enjoying my dream. I was pretty sure I’d almost had a threesome with Bella Thorne and Branwen Shephard. Instead of adding that episode to my fantasy reel, my head was pounding, and I was…I scanned the room…I was in the living room at Locke and Gathe Bowen’s house, lying on the sofa…naked.
A door slammed, and I groaned. Who was being so loud? Rolling over onto my side, I buried my face into the cushion since I didn’t have a pillow.
What had we done last night? I tried to remember.
“Jesus.” Linc Shephard’s voice had my eyes flying back open. “Cover your junk!” he snapped just as a throw landed on me.
I grabbed it and sat up. Linc was the head of the Mississippi branch of the Southern Mafia. But that didn’t mean he could just come barging into the Bowens’ house and wake a guy up. Okay, yeah, it did. He could do whatever the fuck he wanted.
“Get some clothes on and coffee in you. I need you at the house in an hour,” he informed me.
Fucking fantastic. I was going to have to do business with a hangover.
“It smells like cheap perfume, whiskey, and sex in here,” he said with disgust.
I stood up and wrapped the throw around my waist.
“Pretty sure that was what happened last night.” My voice was raspy from sleep.
“Get a goddamn shower. You don’t need to show up smelling like a strip club.”
He was in a pissy mood. Probably shouldn’t tell him his wife had starred in my threesome dream. It wasn’t like I could control my dreams. His wife was blazing hot and much younger than him. She was still older than me, but, hey, older women could be fun.
“What am I showing up to exactly?” I asked, then yawned and ran a hand through my hair. Why was it sticky? I held my hand and stared at it, confused.
“There are three cans of whipped cream on the floor from the front door to here,” he told me.
Oh yeah. The whipped-cream fight. I smirked as memories started to surface, then lifted my gaze back to Linc.
“I don’t want to know,” he said, unamused. “Just get that shit off you, look nice, and be prepared to meet with the governor.”
I frowned. What the fuck had Governor Baskin done this time? Could we not go a month without him doing some dumb shit we had to cover up? When was the next election? I was ready for a new one. Preferably one who wasn’t addicted to prostitutes.
Groaning, I was afraid to ask, but I did anyway. “What did he do?”
“Knocked up a stripper,” Linc replied.
This wasn’t shocking. I was surprised it had taken this long for him to make that mistake.
“What, does he want us to take her to get an abortion?” I didn’t see why I had to be woken up so fucking early for this.
“He knocked her up twenty years ago.”
Trying to figure out what the hell we were gonna do about it, I stood there, waiting for more of an explanation.
“Go get ready,” he barked, looking more irritated with me.
If he didn’t want to explain it twice and wanted to wait until we were all together, then fine. But he didn’t have to be so loud.
“Shower, look nice—got it,” I replied. “Do I need to wake up Locke and Gathe?” I wasn’t sure if they’d made it to their beds when the girls we’d brought home left.
“No. Just you,” he said.
“Me? Why just me?” That was fucking unfair. I wanted to go back to sleep.
Linc scowled. “Because you’re the one I need for the job.”
“And what is the job again?”
Because he hadn’t told me shit. The governor had knocked up a stripper twenty years ago. So? He hadn’t been the governor then. Although Mississippi folks might frown upon this information if it got out.
“Bodyguard,” he replied.
Why was nothing he was saying making sense? Was it the hangover making me slow to catch on?
“For the governor?”
If the governor needed security from us, Linc would send someone like Bane Cash, Oz Savelle, or, hell, even Locke. But me?
I pointed at my chest. “You want me to be the governor’s bodyguard?”
He shook his head. “No. You will be the governor’s daughter’s bodyguard.”
My eyebrows shot up. “You want me to be the bodyguard to an eight-year-old?”
He sighed, looking increasingly pissed off, but, dude, I did not want to hang out with a kid all damn day. Why did the governor’s brat need a bodyguard?
“No. I want you to keep an eye on the stripper’s daughter. Would you fucking pay attention? Take her to school, pick her up. She’s staying at the cabin on my property. You will keep tabs on her the entire time she’s there. If she goes through with her threat to out Baskin to the media and his wife, then shit is gonna hit the fan.”
There were so many things about what he’d just said that I didn’t understand. He was going to get angry and possibly shout again, but, dammit, he was asking me to babysit a nineteen-year-old girl who was threatening her father.
“The stripper’s kid?” I asked, wanting to clarify.
He nodded.
“And she goes to college where?”
“High school. She’s a senior.”
I rubbed my temples. Great. I was dealing with someone who was still in fucking high school at nineteen. Jesus, this was going to be a nightmare.
“I’ll give you all the details, but we’re running out of time. First, go get a fucking shower.”
“Why me?” I asked. I didn’t see what I’d done to Linc to have to suffer a punishment like this.
“Because Baskin has two more years before another election and we clean up his messes and he covers up ours. Do you want Blaise Hughes coming to fucking Mississippi because we didn’t do our job and this shit gets out? How do you think the god-fearing Bible Belt is gonna feel if they find out that the man they have put in office has a kid from a stripper and kept it quiet for twenty years?”
The edge in his tone made it clear this would be bad. I mean, I had known it would be, but, damn, couldn’t they just pay her off or something?
“Don’t we normally dish out hush money on this shit or threaten lives?”
Linc grimaced and shook his head. “Not gonna work this time. The girl’s momma died, left a mountain of medical bills behind, and she has nowhere to go. She called him yesterday on a number he’d given to her mother.” He said the last word with a hiss. “Threatened to tell his wife and the media if he didn’t help her.”
Fuck. She sounded fun. I sighed.
“Okay then, why not Gathe or Forge?” Anyone but me. Do not make me suffer through this bullshit.
“Because Gathe would fuck her and Forge is too old. That leaves you.” His eyes drifted over the room as if he was rethinking that comment. “She’s going to be moved into the cabin today. After we meet with Baskin and get all the details on her and what he wants us to do, you’re going to go with me to pick her up at the motel she is currently at. Then I’ll lay down the rules for her and be on the way.”
“How long do I have to do this?” Please say one day.
“Until she graduates high school. She asked for a place to stay, money to live on, then to cover her expenses for a month after graduation so she can get a job and save some money. She said once she has enough money, she’ll leave town, and he will never hear from her again. He doesn’t believe her though. He knows he’s going to have to write a hush-money check. Probably several times in his life.”
“Graduation isn’t for another two months.”
“Glad you can do math,” Linc replied as he headed for the door.
I watched him go, and then I continued to stare at the empty doorway as dread sank over me. This was going to suck. My eyes slowly scanned the room and the remnants of last night’s events. At least I had gotten my whipped-cream-covered dick sucked by two different girls last night and fucked three of them. We’d passed them around and gone through a box of condoms doing it. Glancing down, I saw my erection growing, tenting the throw I had wrapped around me.
“Guess I need some alone time in the shower with you to relive that blonde on her knees last night, moaning over the whipped-cream-and-cock meal she shoved down her throat,” I said.
That would be the only highlight of this day.