Page 10 of South Beach Bodyguards

“I think so. I don’t know. I never noticed.”

“Okay, thanks, Brandy.”

“Is she home? I want to go see her.”

“She’s at my apartment with me. You can stop by tomorrow. She’s sleeping right now.” I glanced back at the closed door. “Hey, uh, do you know why Isabel might call herself Julia?” It seemed more likely to me a best friend would know that than a mother of a twenty-one year old.

“Julia? Are you shitting me? That’s her drunk name.”

“Her what?” I stared at my laptop screen, trying to interpret what Brandy was saying.

“You know, a drunk name. It’s your alter ego when you go out drinking. Like, if you’re shy like Isabel, when you drink you get wild and chatty and whatever, so you give your drunk-self a drunk name. So the next day, it’s not like you did it, but your alter ego instead. I mean, it’s a joke. But anyway, my drunk name is Mary Kate and Isabel’s is Julia.”

Girls made no goddamn sense to me. Why would you need a second name for going out? That sounded like something my co-worker buddy Alejandro would do, though he would do it so women couldn’t track him down after the fact. He was nothing if not a player. But not being exactly a huge partier myself, it had never occurred to me to have a second, more fun name for my more fun self. Because I was pretty sure I didn’t have a more fun self.

“Okay, thanks.” So Isabel, having taken a blow to the head, thought she was Julia, her sexier self? Now that was messed up. Unnerving. Dangerous. And hopefully fixable. Like immediately if not sooner.

It also made me wonder if she was going to remember any of what she had said or done while at my apartment. I was torn between wanting her to forget so we could go back to being mere friendly acquaintances brought together by our parents’ relationship and wanting her to admit and acknowledge that she had hit on me. Why, though?

Because then I could do something about it? Not. I couldn’t. So it didn’t matter.

I called my father. “Someone needs to do surveillance on Kim’s house. And why don’t you have a camera there anyway?”

“Kim didn’t want it after I left. I think she was worried I would be watching her. Which, to be honest, I probably would have been.”

I had kicked my shoes off and without bothering to get my flipflops I stepped out of my apartment and leaned over the exterior railway. I needed some fresh air. There was a killer breeze and for a second I swore I could smell the ocean, which I couldn’t. But it helped to clear my head. “Dad. I don’t understand how you get women, I truly don’t.”

“I’m charming. You should try it. You always look like a raging bull. Chicks don’t dig that.”

It was true. But “Julia” seemed to like me well enough. How ironic was that? “Thanks for the advice. I’ll get right on it.”

“Don’t act like you don’t get any ass. I highly doubt you’re sleeping alone every night.”

“For the most part, yeah, I am. I steal the covers.” While I was intentionally sidestepping what he was implying, the truth was I didn’t really like sleeping with someone else all night. I didn’t like to cuddle and I slept like shit when someone was touching me. Raging bull might be accurate. “So who are you going to send to do surveillance?”

“I’ll send Jax. He’s not on assignment right now. Did Wester get Kim?”

“Yep. So any idea who might be cruising around your house?”

“I have a few ideas and I’ll handle it. What did Isabel say?”

“Nothing that means a whole lot. She’s out of it.”

After hanging up with my father a few minutes later, I stared down at the street. There was a loan shop across the street, and a dive restaurant that served primarily empanadas. The guy who owned it was a douchebag. He always acted like he was doing you a favor by selling you food. I liked to think of it as local flavor. Customer service wasn’t high on anyone’s priority list in Miami unless you were mega rich. Rap stars could get the royal treatment but the rest of us were just living our lives eying each other warily.

I wasn’t sure how to proceed with my night. Normally I would go for a run after work or hit the gym. I also had a secret addiction to blueberry muffins and sometimes I jogged to the coffee shop to score one. Then on weeknights it was TV and bed, since I was usually up by five in the morning. Days off were different. I’d hit the beach or go fishing or let Alejandro talk me into going to some dumb club in South Beach.

Now I felt trapped in my own apartment and I didn’t like it. The urge to go for a run to sweat off the lust I was feeling was massive, but I couldn’t leave Isabel alone. I felt like a caged bull in addition to a raging bull. Sitting still wasn’t something I excelled at and I had all kinds of heat pumping through my veins as I stood there, toe-kicking the metal railing and picturing Isabel standing in front of me looking like a goddess brought to life to torture the hell out of me.

I’d never given much thought to her body before because she had seemed so young and the nature of our parents’ relationship just made her off limits to me. I had seen her as a kid. Holy hell, had that been a miscalculation. Now that I had seen her naked and wet, I knew there was nothing childlike about those curves.

Casting my thoughts backwards I tried to remember every conversation I’d had with Isabel. I just remembered she had been awkward and I had been awkward because she had been awkward. I couldn’t tease women into feeling comfortable. It wasn’t in my DNA. I was what my ex-girlfriend had referred to as the strong, silent type. Which at the end had morphed to her calling me dead dull. Just because I didn’t talk to hear the sound of my own voice didn’t make me dull. I just didn’t waste words.

Frustrated as hell, I went back into my apartment and locked the door. I dropped down on the floor and did a hundred sit ups, then fifty push ups, just to sweat off my excess energy. It didn’t work. So I took a shower and gave myself a quick jerk off in hopes I’d stop wanting to drive my spike in Isabel. It helped for about thirty seconds. Then after drying off, I put a towel around my waist and went to check on her. It was about that time to make sure she was still responsive.

Opening the door to my room, I was unnerved to see her sleeping in my bed. She looked quite at home there. I’d pulled the covers over her after she had tumbled onto the bed, and she had settled in during the intervening two hours. Her dark hair spread across my gray pillowcase and she was making praying hands. It was fucking adorable and sexy and all kinds of disturbing.

Carefully so I wouldn’t scare her, I padded over to her and gently touched her shoulder. “Hey, Isabel.” Then I remembered. “Or Julia. Whoever you are right now. Wake up for me.”

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