Chapter Sixty-One #2
“Just that it is very high. And whoever slit your wrist clearly wants it to make it look like you want to end your life. So a balcony…”
“Oh,” I said, stomach sinking at the idea.
“I actually never go out to the railing,” I admitted. “Anyone who knows me would know that. I like being up high, but I get dizzy too close to the railing or the window.”
“That’s good to know,” he said.
“Do you think Lennon has some sort of method to prevent me from going over that balcony if someone tried to force me to?” I asked.
“I’m sure he does.”
And, boy, did he.
But it would involve actual construction that couldn’t be done for a few weeks, thanks to some scheduling difficulties.
“This is the best of the best that money can buy, Miss Coulter,” Lennon told me, even after I insisted he call me Miranda no less than three times.
“Money is not a factor,” I insisted. “Time, however…” I said, waving toward the balcony. “I’m sorry,” I said, sighing. “I’m just paranoid.”
“Paranoid is good,” Lennon insisted. “Paranoid keeps you alive. I understand your anxiousness to get the project done to both of our satisfaction. It is a complicated process, unfortunately, so it can’t be rushed.
But my advice for the time being would include a specialty lock to that balcony to keep you or anyone else from being able to go out there. And Miss Coulter?” he called.
“Yes?”
“Don’t apologize for being concerned for your safety,” Lennon insisted.
Apologizing.
It was the hardest habit to shake, I’d found.
It was something you really had to work to avoid doing in the business world. If you paid close attention, men rarely apologized. Especially in business settings. No matter how wrong they might have been. Apologizing was a sign of weakness. So I worked hard never to do it.
Except, of course, sometimes everyone slipped up.
Especially after the week I’d had.
“I feel like this might be a good time to bring up the topic of a tracker.”
“A… tracker?” I asked, face scrunching. “Like a chip? Like for dogs?” I added.
“Just like that, yes, but not internal. Though, of course, those are available.”
“Of course,” I agreed, feeling like my head was spinning a bit.
Men parachuting onto balconies. Implanted tracking chips. It all just seemed so insane.
But the way Lennon talked about it said that it not only happened, but that it wasn’t even that rare. Which was kind of terrifying.
“So you want me to carry around a tracking dog tag,” I summarized.
“I want for us to be able to track your location at anytime while you are under our protection,” Lennon clarified.
“What does this tag look like? How will I carry it around? Wouldn’t my phone or my smartwatch do the same thing?”
“The thing is, Miss Coulter,” Lennon said, clasping his fingers together on the surface of the table, “if we are dealing with professionals here, they will know that both your phone and smartwatch can be tracked. They would, therefore, deactivate them. And then we would be in the dark.”
“Okay. What do these look like then?” I asked.
Lennon waved toward his man who was hovering a few feet away with a box that he handed to his boss.
“First, we have the keychain,” he said, producing a little leather circular-looking owl.
“There’s a tracker in this?” I asked, taking it from him.
“Yes. That is step one. You would typically have your keys on you.”
“Step one?”
“Yes. Step two is this little clip that you will put on every morning, hooked so it sits inside the waistband of your pants,” he told me, producing a little black circle with a hook for the top of your pants.
“But since there is a lot of room for error with that, we also have step three,” he told me, going back into his box to grab a jewelry box.
I braced myself for the worst.
Jewelry was so subjective.
I was very particular.
Or as Cam would say, ‘impossible to shop for.’
Lennon popped the top off and passed the jewelry to me.
It was a piece of round rose gold with this very intricate, lacy, rose gold bow on top.
As far as jewelry went, it wasn’t exactly Tiffany. But it wasn’t off the shelf at some novelty shop, either.
“This is all genuine rose gold, so it should pass inspection from acquaintances of yours. But since you will be wearing it from this point on, it might be wise to come up with a cover story for it. A gift from your family or a boyfriend is usually the best bet.”
I didn’t ever talk about my personal life with my staff. Or even my acquaintances, unless we were discussing things like shows we’d seen or gallery openings we’d attended.
But it would be unusual for me to wear the same exact piece of jewelry for days or weeks on end. Sure, I had my staple pieces—about a dozen sets of earrings, and eight to ten bracelets or necklaces to choose between—but I usually wore them in rotations.
“Okay,” I said, nodding, the old part of me annoyed that the new part of me was being so vain over something so insignificant.
After all, the old me wore the same gold hoops—a gift on my sixteenth birthday—and tennis bracelet—a graduation present—every single day for years. “Is that it? Or are there more steps?”
“For now, that should do,” Lennon said, giving me the hint of a smile.
“When something happens, and we don’t know where you are, Brock and I will both have access to the tracking information from these devices.
They’re very accurate. So when something happens, you don’t need to worry. We will be on our way.”
“And when he says ‘when something happens,’” Brock said, tone reassuring. “He means if. And it is extremely unlikely.”
Except, of course, according to Lennon, that was statistically untrue when it came to wealthy clients.
He had one client who was taken three times over the course of one year.
“I could never do his job,” I told Brock as he closed the door to the hallway after Lennon and his man left. “I would be paranoid about everything.”
“Yeah, that does seem to be an unfortunate consequence of the job,” Brock agreed.
“What do you think his apartment is like?” I asked, envisioning rooms full of screens that showed camera angles of every inch of his space. Multiple locks and alarms on every window and door.
“Whatever you are imagining is probably pretty accurate,” Brock said. “He keeps his knife drawer locked. And his toolbox is in a safe. Since a lot of people end up beaten, stabbed, or shot with items the intruder found in their houses.”
“Fantastic. Another terrifying statistic to have rolling around in my head, keeping me from sleep,” I said, going into the kitchen to set the kettle on, feeling too wired for coffee, but needing a comforting hot drink regardless.
“No one is getting in here,” Brock assured me. “Not with me here,” he added, and I immediately felt a bit of calm wash over me. Because, as un-feminist as this was for me to admit, I did feel safer knowing there was a man in the house.
Then again, it might not have had anything to do with his maleness.
It could have very well just been his training.
I likely would have felt just as safe with a female ex-military guard in my house.
Anyone who would know what to do if someone attacked, who wouldn’t hesitate, who could at least distract the bad guy long enough for me to call the police for help.
It wasn’t that this was the first time in my life where I worried about my safety.
I mean, I was a woman. We had it hammered into it our entire childhoods and adolescence that we were practically moments away from kidnapping, rape, and murder.
Because, well, the statistics didn’t lie.
It was true for one in three of us. But I guess gaining success, having the kind of income that would allow me to live in a building with a doorman, those sorts of things had insulated me a bit from threats in the past.
Random people didn’t just get to waltz into my building, going wherever they wanted to.
I also had a driver, so I wasn’t worried about standing on subway platforms at night, or walking around in sketchy areas.
Sure, there was always that heart-drop moment when a guy appeared out of nowhere, or when someone was being a little creepy, but it wasn’t as prominent a part of my life as it had been when I was younger.
It was unsettling to be forced back into that old mindset, to have to be paranoid about anyone who got close to me.
At least until we figured out who’d done this to me.
“So what time tomorrow?” Brock asked.
“Tomorrow?” I repeated, mind a little fuzzy from all the new fears and information clouding it.
“To take a trip to Navesink Bank,” Brock clarified.
“Oh, right. Well, I have two meetings in the morning, then some conference calls. But after that, it is mostly busy work that I can do from the car, or some other time,” I told him. “We could head out by three, if that works for you.”
“Yep. I’ve got nothing else going on while I’m on your case, sweetheart.”
“Okay. I will tell Mitchell… why are you shaking your head?” I asked, brows drawing down.
“I’ll drive.”
“That’s silly. Why drive when I have a driver?”
“Miranda,” he said, tone a mix of amused and firm as he got closer, a little too close if you were asking my libido, and ducked his head down a bit. “I’m driving. Give Mitchell the day off.”
“Okay,” I agreed, feeling my belly doing little flip-flops at his nearness. We weren’t going to talk about what another part of my anatomy was doing about it.
“Okay,” he agreed. And, was it just me, or had his voice gone a little sexy-soft when he said that?
No.
That was my wishful thinking.
“I am going to go take this and have a long bath,” I told him, reaching for my cup of tea.
This time, though, I was almost positive it wasn’t wishful thinking, that his eyes did go just a bit hooded and heated at that comment.
Which only made the situation worse.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “A shower and some sleep sounds good tonight.”
Oh, damn him.
Did he do that on purpose?
I made him think of me naked, so he had to make me think of him?
No.
That was ridiculous.
I needed to get it together.
“Okay. Well… goodnight,” I said, taking a step toward the doorway.
“Goodnight, Miranda,” he said, and I pretended to ignore the little thrill in my belly at the sound of my name in that soft-sexy voice, and the way his gaze was still on me until I was completely out of the doorway.
But when I looked back, he was leaning on the doorjamb, watching, until I caught him, then he retreated back into the kitchen.
It wasn’t long after that I was sunken deep into a hot tub, my head slamming back on the porcelain as I heard him move into the guest bathroom that shared a wall with mine.
Probably taking off his clothes, getting ready for his shower.
Taking a deep breath, I gave into the raging need between my thighs, letting my hand move down my body to tease my fingers up my cleft at the sounds of water splattering on the tile floor one room away.
In my mind, I imagined him overcome with the need as well as he reached down to start working his cock as I worked on my clit.
I was so wrapped up in the moment that I forgot all about being quiet, about not being alone.
The cries of my orgasm echoed off the walls of the bathroom, the sound jerking me right out of my daze and into the present moment, suddenly all too aware of the fact that the water had stopped in the other bathroom, the sound that may have muffled my cries.
So, yeah, I was reasonably sure he’d heard.
“Damnit,” I hissed as my foot unplugged the drain as I stood up.
Maybe he’d gone to bed before I’d gotten loud.
At least, that was what I had to hope for.
Since we were going to be cooped up in a car with each other for more than an hour the following day.
The sad thing, I realized as I climbed into bed and turned on the TV, though, was that it hadn’t helped.
It wasn’t just about an orgasm that I’d needed.
Because as I tossed and turned in bed, the need was not abated. If anything, it just seemed to keep building.
Which left me with one conclusion.
It wasn’t that I was just in need of release.
It was that I needed Brock to give it to me.
And that, well, that just couldn’t happen.