AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“How do you feel?” she asked. Behind her were Terry and Constance.
I pulled my covers up to my neck. “Like shit,” I admitted.
I didn’t drink often, but after Duke had ripped my heart out, Grace brought bottles of wine to my room and drank with me until I fell asleep. I did most of the drinking. The bottles of merlot sat almost empty on my nightstand. My headache said we should have chosen a white.
“Why are you all…”
Grace settled onto the edge of the bed. “I’m here for my bestie in her time of need.”
The sentiment made me sigh.
Terry moved closer. “And because her house is being fumigated and nobody else would have her. So I stayed to keep an eye on her.”
“Shut up,” Grace snapped.
“And I stayed,” Constance added, “to keep these two from killing each other.”
The look in Terry’s eyes as he gazed at Grace’s ass was the opposite of homicidal. “His brothers will talk some sense into him,” he assured me.
“It doesn’t matter.” The last thing I needed was any discussion of the fool I’d made of myself with Duke.
Constance offered a glass of orange juice. “I have to go into work for a few days so I don’t blow my cover. You should call in and take the day off.”
I accepted the glass and nodded. “Yeah.” I needed a plan for how much to tell my boss about yesterday. The higher-ups would be apoplectic that someone in the agency had been taking bribes and probably start looking for scapegoats. To save himself, Powell would likely accuse all of us of knowing and not telling him.
“I’ll stay,” Grace offered. “I can print out a picture of the jerk, and we can play darts.”
Terry laughed. “You carry darts around with you?”
Her head snapped around. “If you play pool, you have your own cue. I have my own darts. Plus, they can be handy. Like when you need a jerk to back off.” She made a shooing motion. “Git.”
Terry didn’t back up. “I’ll be at the office. If you need anything, call.”
“Sure.” I nodded. He couldn’t give me the one thing I needed, though.
All I wanted was to sleep and forget my broken heart. It was my fault for mistaking lust on Duke’s part for true caring, wasn’t it? I’d been such a fool to think a guy like Duke could want a girl as broken as me.
But first I needed to call Powell and take the day off.
“This is my lucky set. I think you need them more than I do,” Grace said as she put a plastic package of three darts in my purse. “For a while.”
I didn’t play, but I wasn’t going to argue with the sentiment. I dialed my phone and connected to my boss.
“Fine,” Powell said when I explained that maybe I had the flu. “But if it isn’t cancer, I expect you first thing Monday.”
Compassionate as always.
By mid-afternoon,I’d conquered the headache with fluids and Advil and even taken a shower and gotten dressed. In other words, I looked almost human, which was better than I felt.
Lifting the next spoonful of minestrone to my mouth, I blew on it, then swallowed. It tasted like…nothing. It was boring, just like me and the rest of the life I was doomed to live out. Even the light from the living room windows was duller than I remembered.
Two weeks with Duke had packed in more excitement than the entire rest of my life, and it was over. I was back to living in a house I didn’t even own, sitting in front of a fireplace that I always planned to light and cook marshmallows over, but never had.
I still couldn’t wrap my head around what had gone wrong between us. I’d thought we fit great together. The day at Disneyland had been nicer than any date I’d ever had. The nights had been fantastic. Everything had meshed until yesterday.
He’d rescued me. He’d done his job, and now that it was over, he no longer wanted me. He’d acted like he cared just to make me compliant, to keep me under control, and make his job easier.
Would things between us have worked out differently if I hadn’t instantly fallen for him? If we’d taken things slowly? If we’d met outside of this strange bodyguard environment where we had to be together all the time?
