Page 5 of Her Older Protector

“Leah, you up?” I hear Jake say, and he cracks the door to stick his head in. I grab for the tangled sheets and push my sweaty hair back from my face, trying to assume a casual expression as I look up into his handsome face.

“Morning,” he says, and his eyes crinkle at the corners as the corner of his mouth quirks up in a sexy little smirk. “Sleep okay?”

“Yeah,” I reply, my voice still a little breathless. I can feel my cheeks flush beet red, but if Jake can tell what I was just up to he’s not saying either way. “I slept great.”

He swings the door open the rest of the way, and in the morning light, I can see that his big body almost fills the door frame. His hair, still wet from the shower, nearly touches the top of the frame, and his broad shoulders, heavy with muscle, are almost as wide.

He looks fucking mouthwatering, I realize. A little older. A little more mature. But that doesn’t detract from his appeal. At. All. He’s wearing a form-fitting thermal shirt and worn jeans with lace-up boots, the kind that earn their miles. His sleeves are pushed up past his forearms, and tattoos swirl along the corded muscle.

“Shower’s open, if you want it,” he says, jerking a thumb behind him. “Towels are on the shelf next to the sink. Or you can go back to your house if you want, and I can go with you. But I’d rather you don’t go until I get it secured.”

“Here’s fine,” I tell him, and rise from the bed to follow him out the door to the bathroom.

“I’ll be in the kitchen making breakfast,” he says just as I close the door. The sexy smirk still plays at his lips. He turns to walk away, then pauses, looking over his shoulder. “Call if you need help washing your back.”

“Well, notnow,” I mumble and slam the door on his laughing face.

I pad barefoot into the kitchen a few minutes later, hair wet and smelling of Jake’s soap and shampoo. He turns to me with a broad smile and hands me a cup of coffee, and I sip it gratefully, practically moaning at the taste. Like dark, freshly-ground beans.

“I want to rig up some security for your house today,” he informs me as he turns to the stove and cracks an egg into a skillet.

I look down into my coffee. “You don’t need to do that. I’ll be gone before long, anyway.”

The metal flipper in Jake’s hand falls to the stovetop with a clatter as he wheels around to look at me, a fierce expression on his face. The noise startles me and I jump, coffee sloshing over the rim of my cup and onto the countertop. His expression softens right away, and he picks the flipper up again and gently pokes at the frying eggs.

“Patrick is a mean piece of shit, but I’m bigger, smarter, and have more tricks up my sleeve,” he says, his voice low and cautious. He flips the egg and turns back to me. “Will you let me help you?”

I hesitate. “Are you sure you want to?”

He nods and steps closer to me, close enough to reach out and run his fingertips through the long strands of wet hair around my shoulders.

“I’m absolutely sure,” he says as he toys with the damp ends. “We can figure this out.”

Jake isn’t kidding, I decide later as I watch him wire up another panic button in my kitchen. After a trip to a home improvement store, during which he bought a hugely confusing array of wires, switches, buttons and other bits and bobs, he sat down in my house and started wiring up a security system. From scratch.

He reallydoeshave a lot of tricks up his sleeve.

A suspicious number of tricks, if I’m being honest with myself.

“Where’d you learn all this stuff?” I ask him as he reaches into my fuse box and fiddles with a few exposed wires.

He looks over his shoulder and throws a grin at me. “Here and there. Comes in handy in my line of work.”

“You still haven’t actually explained what that is,” I point out. “Are you some kind of a secret agent?”

His back muscles stiffen a bit, but he keeps working away inside the fuse box. “I think of myself as a problem solver.”

I roll my eyes. “Fine, I’ll accept that. You’d tell me, but you’d have to kill me, right?”

Jake straightens and looks down at me, his eyes gleaming with humor. “Something like that. I want to hear about you, though. What doyoulike to do?”

The question surprises me. My interests haven’t mattered in years. Not when I was with Patrick—he didn’t give a shit about my interests—and definitely not since I’ve been on the run.

“I like to draw,” I heard myself say. It feels so odd to give voice to the forgotten parts of myself. The parts that nobody cared about anymore. “I always thought I could be an artist. Or maybe an art teacher.”

He moves in closer. “Then that’s what you’ll be,” he says simply.

I shake my head. “You can’t promise that.”

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