Chapter Five
T he tattooed bodyguard who never made eye contact, but who I felt had been watching me since he’d come upstairs, tipped his chin. “No interruption, ma’am.” Moving around me, he grabbed the heavy exit door before it closed all the way and slipped inside.
I was left standing next to him.
The bodyguard who’d walked me into the club, railroaded every thought and feeling about men I’d ever had, then walked out of the club fifteen minutes ago when I couldn’t stop staring at him.
I shivered.
Smirking, he pulled out a cigarette as he scanned the alley. “You cold?”
The way he asked, the rough deepness to his voice, I didn’t think for one second that he actually thought I was cold.
“I’m all right.” I wasn’t.
Being near him was like simultaneously having your skin on fire and being dunked in ice water. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been obsessively thinking about him since the very moment I’d laid eyes on him.
He lit his cigarette. “You don’t strike me as the type to take a smoke break, sweetheart.”
Gooseflesh raced across my skin as I tried to ignore the way his voice caressed the endearment. “I don’t.” I hated smokers. I hated the smell. Or I had, until the moment he’d put his arm around me in the hallway and I’d inhaled the intoxicating mix of smoke and fresh laundry and man.
He took a long drag. “Then why are you out here?” He nodded toward the back door of the club. “Fun’s inside.”
I’d beg to differ. “It’s not really my scene.” Loud, hot, crowded, people drinking too much, it wasn’t my idea of fun.
“Yeah?” He spared me a quick glance.
Unlike most men in the club who’d looked at me, his brief appraisal wasn’t blatant or even sexual. It was simply… dominant.
“Why’s that?” He turned and exhaled before looking back at me with his intense gaze. “You don’t dance?”
“I hate dancing,” I admitted, telling him something I’d never told anyone. The years of ballet and ballroom dance classes my mother had made me take growing up only solidified my desire to be someone behind the spotlight, not in front of it.
He raised an eyebrow. “But you came out to a club.”
I told him the truth. “When someone like Dreena MacKenzie invites you out, you go.” She was Hollywood’s darling.
He frowned. “You’re not friends?”
I shrugged, a gesture my mother would’ve been horrified by. “I met her on her last movie set when they filmed here in Miami. I did her makeup for a few scenes when her regular makeup artist fell ill.” Dreena had been sweet, and we were about the same age. I’d gotten the impression she wasn’t very happy, but seeing her tonight with her boyfriend who used to be her bodyguard, she was a different person.
He took another drag of his cigarette. “That’s your job?”
“Yes.” I loved doing makeup, not that I had to work. “Is this what you always do, personal security?” I felt stupid the second I asked it, as if protecting people wasn’t an honorable occupation.
He blew out a smoke ring. “I’m not on the clock tonight.”
Intimidated by his muscles, his confidence, his presence, I didn’t ask any more questions.
He tossed his cigarette down and crushed it with his huge boot. “Doing a favor for Tank.”
“Tank?” I asked.
“Falcon,” he corrected.
“You call him Tank?” I shouldn’t have been surprised. Dreena’s boyfriend wasn’t only the size of a tank, but formidable, like Ty.
Ty nodded as he scanned the alley again.
“Is your name really Ty?” I dared to ask. “Or is that a nickname?”
His jaw moved back and forth like he was agitated. Then his hand landed on the gun at his holster as he turned to face me. His dark eyes bored into mine, and for three whole seconds, he stared at me before his rough voice broke the spell. “You should go back inside, Miss Loic.”
My whole body stilled.
Then it was as if my entire life up until this very moment flashed before me, and suddenly I didn’t know who I was. I wasn’t the girl who went clubbing with a famous actress, her intimidating former Marine boyfriend, and a handful of people I’d never met. And I certainly wasn’t the girl who took one look at a man and lost all sense of myself—except that was exactly what had happened.
One look.
But upstairs he’d told me to step back, then he’d tenderly tucked my hair behind my ear. Now his stare was cutting through me and settling deep as he again told me to leave him alone, but followed the order with the knowledge that he knew my surname. His mixed signals were playing on me hard, and I was no longer standing outside a club. I was underwater in the deep end.
I grasped at the only lifeline I had. “You know my last name?”
For two heartbeats, he didn’t answer.
Then his voice dropped, and he leaned toward me. “I know more than just a name, sweetheart.”
I fought to swallow. And breathe.
Tipping his chin, he bit out a command. “Go back inside.”
My nerves a mess, warmth pooling low in my belly, God help me, I didn’t want to go back inside.
I wanted to reach for him.
As if reading my thoughts, he issued a warning.
“ Now .”