Page 128 of Vengeful Guard

“You’re what? I thought you only saw working girls for this very reason.”

“Should’ve stayed with the working girls,” I mutter. “I’m in love with Paige Burke.”

Cillian’s eyes nearly pop out of his head, and his mouth drops open. “Declan is going to kill you.”

I pull up my top lip to show him it’s busted, and he winces. “He already tried.”

I sip the second beer, but I’m going to have to order something stronger.

“How did this happen? I knew you were her bodyguard, but I never thought?—”

“It’s a long story.” But I guess really, it’s not.

I started protecting her, and she just started to grow on me. Her sunshine personality, her pretty face, that body of hers... Now it feels like I can’t live without her. Like I’ve never been without her, and I don’t know how I’ll do it now.

I can’t go back to what it was like before, when she hated me.

Will she hate me now? Now that we got caught?

She never answered the question about having feelings for me, which probably means that she doesn’t. It was all just a fling to her, and now I’m stuck in love with her.

She doesn’t want more than what we have. She’s made that clear. She doesn’t even want me around all the time “babysitting” her. She made that clear, too.

So, why do I expect any more? Why did I expect her to follow me out of the house, track me down, call me?

I look down at my phone, hating myself for looking so often. No texts. No calls.

Is it because she doesn’t want to reach out or she can’t? Have they forbidden her from contacting me?

Feck. I hate that I don’t have a way of knowing.

I should be there, protecting her, making sure she’s okay, making sure she doesn’t tear at the seams, instead of at a bar, gutted that I may never again see the woman I love. Worrying that she might be hurting and has no one on her side because the family turned against her. Because of me.

Cillian shrugs. “I’ve got time. I was planning to go out tonight, anyway. The ladies will just have to wait until we’re done talking.”

He grins, and I shake my head, smiling.

I wish I was more like Cillian. I wish I could pick up girls in bars. It always just seemed easier to pick them up where they were working, where it was a transaction. Where we all knew where we stood.

I hadn’t wanted to fall for anyone, or for anyone to fall for me, so I’d made sex a tit-for-tat situation.

But it hasn’t been that way with Paige. It’s like I can’t control myself around her, like everything in my life has started to revolve around her.

And now I’ve fecked everything up. Just like I knew I would.

I tell Cillian about the recent attack, about how I was too busy checking Paige out to realize that Murphy’s men were infiltrating the restaurant.

Cillian curses halfway through the story. “This is how Patrick got hurt?”

I nod slowly. “If you want to hit me, you can.”

He frowns. “Why would I want to do that?”

“I was distracted. Patrick has been like a father to me, and not only have I been sleeping with his baby girl, I didn’t even protect him.”

“You were not supposed to protect him. He had his men for that. You protected her,” Cillian points out. “That’s your job, Kael. That’s what the Burkes hired you for. I’m telling you right now, Patrick would rather you save Paige than him. Besides, what’s his men’s excuses? You weren’t the only one there tasked to protect them, so what were they doing?”

“It doesn’t matter. I should have saved them both,” I growl, slamming my beer bottle down on the table.

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