Page 150 of South Beach Bodyguards

He always had a way of throwing me off kilter.

“You sound like a waiter.”

Alejandro took another step back, adjusting his jeans. “I’m not a server. Or an employee. I’m your lover. I’m the man who loves you. You can do what you want with that, but don’t joke about it.”

My panties were around my ankles and my skirt was still bunched up around my hips. But I froze, shocked. “You’re the one blackmailing me.”

“You don’t want this?” he asked.

I shook my head, feeling defiant. He was blackmailing me. He’d given me an ultimatum.

“Liar.”

“Don’t call me a liar!” I couldn’t get those words out of my head. He was my lover. He was the man who loved me.

I wanted to just run and jump into his arms and throw caution to the wind and take that love and hold it close forever. But I was afraid.

Oh my God. I was afraid he would leave me. Just like Max had.

The thought made me catch my breath.

That was why I was holding back. That was why I was refusing to accept that the foundation of feelings for Alejandro could grow if I let them.

All these damn years of clinging to my relationship with Max was because I was afraid everyone was right. That he had left me.

“Maybe liar is the wrong way to put it. You’re just not honest with yourself,” he added.

Despite my revelation that still pissed me off. “What do you think my truth is?”

For some reason that made him grin. “That you want me.”

“That’s not something I’ve been dishonest about.” I simultaneously wanted to end this conversation and resolve it. We were circling something, only I didn’t know what. I shoved my skirt back down and stepped out of my ruined panties. I bent over and retrieved them to toss in the trash.

“You just shook your head a minute ago.”

I scooped Max the cat off the counter. I really needed to change his name to something less emotionally charged. I held him against my chest and raked my fingers through his soft orange fur. Feeling the cat purr grounded me. “Alejandro. Are we making a mistake?”

“About what?”

Raising my gaze, I met his head on. “Us. Because we are creating an us, aren’t we?”

His nostrils flared. “I’m trying to. But you have to tell me what you want. I’m going to ask you today and I’m going to ask you again in twenty-eight days. Other than that, I swear I won’t bring it up.”

The cat clawed at me to get down. I set him on the floor. I looked at Alejandro and I tried to listen to my heart. Not to my fear. Not to my ambitions to be a mother. But to my heart.

“What I want is you. And me. And a chance at a life together.”

It was out and I couldn’t take it back.

But he took me into his arms and murmured in my ear, “I love you.”

And everything made sense with his strong shoulders there for me to lean on.

eleven

“Sit down,” Mickey told me. He was smoking a cigarette at his desk, which surprised me. I had never seen him smoke inside his office. “Wester told me you were looking for intel on your girl’s rental. You could have come to me about that, you know.”

“I didn’t want to bother you.” I had mixed feelings about Mickey and I had since I had started working for him four years earlier. I knew that he and Ryan had issues and I knew that Mickey skirted the law, and downright ran over moral boundaries, but at the same time, he had always been good to me. He had believed in me when I had been adrift, no clue what to do with my life, frustrated with my family, and feeling like I had lost any sense of purpose.

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