Page 22 of The Bodyguard

“I love you, so much. If anything ever happened to you I would never forgive myself,thatis why Bodie is here. Why I’m asking you to do all of this, it would break my heart if I lost you.”

That was a strange thing to say, and the look on his face… I don’t know. Everything just feels more than a little weird. The atmosphere, it’s tense. I don’t like it, it’s unsettling. “Why would you ever lose me? Dad, what’s going on here?”

He drops his head: lays a hand across the back of his neck.

“Dad?”

“I don’t want you to worry.” He looks up. “Okay?”

“Difficult thing to do, to be honest.” I lean back against the doorpost. “Why are you even talking to Stefan Novak? You haven’t had anything to do with him or his family for a long time. You always said you wanted to keep your distance from him.”

“He is trying to take what isn’t his, Lena. And that can’t happen.”

My father’s expression, it’s worrying. I’ve never seen him this way before.

“Okay, but, what’s any of this got to do with me? You’ve had issues like this before, with other families trying to muscle in…”

“This time it’s different.”

“How?”

He takes his glasses off and lays them down on the table, pushes back his chair, gets up, and comes over to me. “Let me worry about that.”

“You keep telling me not to worry and yet, everything you’re saying is only making me worry more.”

“Just let Bodie do his job, and you’ll be okay.” He sighs quietly, briefly turning his head away before he looks back at me. “Your brother and I will sort this out.”

“What’s really going on, Dad?” Because I think there’s a lot more to it than what he’s telling me. Which, to be honest, is very little.

He drops his head again, and once more runs his hand along the back of his neck. And the sigh that comes out of him, it takes over his entire body. “Just stay close to Bodie.” And when he lifts his head and looks into my eyes, there’s a hardness in there that’s screaming at me not to argue with him. To not push this, to leave it alone. “Please, Lena.”

“Okay.” What else can I do? This is as far as I’m going to get. And the look in my father’s eyes, I’ve never seen that look before, and it scares me. It’s not often my father shows any signs of giving a shit about anything, but when it comes to his family he’d kill for us. And there’s something about all of this that’s telling me even he’s rattled slightly by whatever’s happening here.

“I worry about you, Dad. And I’m terrified that one day…”

“Ssh.” He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear and smiles, and suddenly the coldness is gone from his eyes and he’s back to being my dad. “I’m going to be fine, don’t you worry about me. I just need to make sure thatyou’regoing to be okay, and that’s why I have to put all my trust in Bodie.”

“But you barely know him. You’re putting your trust in a virtual stranger, how do you know he isn’t connected to Novak? That they haven’t…?”

“There isn’t a thing I don’t know about that man, and I trust him. If I had any doubts, at all, he would not be here. So you should trust him, too. And I know that what I’m asking you to do, it’s strange, I get that. I do. And it won’t be forever, I promise you that, but for now Bodie must be by your side, twenty-four-seven, when you aren’t in this house. Do you understand?”

“Yes. I understand.”

“Good girl.” He smiles and pulls me in for a hug and I hold onto him. He’s my dad, and I love him, so fucking much. And if this is what I have to do to keep him happy, to stop him wasting time worrying about me, then I’ll do it. I’ll put on that show, be the woman he needs me to be, like he said, it won’t be forever. And once this is all over Bodie can be written off as the (pretend) rebound romance he’s gearing up to be, and I can get back on with my life. Doesn’t sound so bad when I think about it that way.

“I love you, Dad,” I whisper, breathing him in, and he rubs my back and kisses the top of my head.

“I love you too, princess.”

“I really should go to bed. It’s getting late.” I step out of his arms and walk away, out of the kitchen and into the hallway, and I make my way upstairs. Mum must already be in bed, and I have no idea where Ollie is or what he’s doing, and I’m going to try and keep it that way. Try not think about the danger my brother might be in, he can handle himself. Besides, he could just be out with his mates for all I know. He’s not under surveillance, is he? He can go home to his own place. Sleep in his own bed.

Closing my bedroom door behind me, I lean back against it and look around. My parents have quite obviously never touched this room since I left home all those years ago. Posters of ‘90s boybands still decorate one of the walls, a CD player sits on the dresser, even the wardrobe’s still full of clothes I haven’t worn since I was a teenager. The only thing they appear to have changed is the TV which is, mercifully, new and, I suspect, recently bought. When they knew I was coming back, albeit for a, hopefully, short stay.

Moving over to the window, I’m about to draw the curtains when I catch sight of Bodie in the guest cottage. I’ve a clear view of it from my window, and seeing as he hasn’t bothered to drawhiscurtains I can clearly see him pacing the living-room floor, his phone to his ear. I watch as he rakes a hand through his hair and sits down on the couch, laying his phone down on the table in front of him. And, again, I wonder who he was talking to. There’s no wedding ring, but that doesn’t mean to say there isn’t a wife out there. Not all men wear rings. Or maybe there’s a girlfriend, and I close my eyes and try to imagine what she would look like, and then my eyes snap open. What the hell am I doing?

Quickly drawing the curtains, I drop my head and breathe in, then out. Slowly. Calmly. This whole situation is starting to get to me now, and that conversation with my father, it really has unsettled me. He’s hiding something, maybe they all are, and I have zero control over that.

Sitting down on the edge of the bed I feel a wave of exhaustion wash over me. I’m not sure I’ve even got the energy to brush my teeth and wipe the make-up off my face, but I’ve fallen asleep before, after omitting to do either of those things, albeit in my younger days. And waking up the next morning is never a pleasant experience when you’ve a weird taste in your mouth and mascara streaking your cheeks. And your pillow. So I pull myself up off the bed and head into the bathroom. Tomorrow’s another day. Another crazy, unpredictable day. And I need to be ready to handle every level of shit it could possibly throw at me.

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