Page 44 of Trust My Bodyguard

“What? I don’t look like a small-town kinda guy?”

“I really thought you were hatched from a 900-year-old egg.”

I roll my eyes, knowing she’s trying to rile me up.

“Honestly. I thought you grew up in a cave or something.”

“Ha-ha.” A smile grows on my face. “You seem to think about me a lot.”

Her cheeks redden. “Don’t flatter yourself. I’m just looking for your weakness.”

You are my weakness.

I stare at her side profile for a drawn-out moment until she meets my eyes. Something sneaks into her gaze that is neither playful nor jesting. Her eyelids drop and I know she’s looking at my lips. My breath stalls as I watch hers too.

It’d take nothing to slam the brakes and close the space between us. The car has slowed to a crawl as it is. She licks her lips as if daring me to make good on my intentions.

“What’s that?” Iris leans in, inserting her hand between our faces to point at a dilapidated building.

Her intrusion is enough to whip my head back into place.

Ivy clears her throat and looks out the window too. “Yeah, what’s that?”

“An old church.” I slow down so they can really take it in. The place is overgrown with shrubs, and the stone walls are covered with moss. The sign is broken, faded, and hidden by growers. “It’s been that way for as long as I can remember.”

“Why?” Ivy asks.

“Someone started a rumor that it was haunted. The rumor spread around town until no one agreed to go there any longer. They had a new one built and this one was forgotten.”

“Wow. I wonder what’s in there now.”

I glance at Iris. “Just broken-down pews and our initials on the walls.”

“Whose initials?”

“Me and the guys’. Except someone has drawn over it now. That was many years ago.”

“You weren’t scared?” she asks.

“Very little scares me.”

Ivy scoffs.

I shake my head and don’t give her the reward of an argument. The church is behind us and a row of identical houses appear.

“The town, with the help of Cliff, built this subsidized neighborhood years ago for residents that didn’t have homes.” I spot a couple of folks I know. They wave and I wave back.

“No one does that for anyone in Denver,” Ivy muses.

“Beauty of a small town. We help each other.” I zoom past the homes because there’s not much else to see.

My destination is the town’s square. It’s the liveliest spot in all of Pine Peaks as most businesses are located there. I’m well aware of the threat this poses to Iris so when we’re close, I tell her to pull up her hoodie and slip on her sunglasses.

I find a nice spot and park. The ladies get out and their unabashed wonder makes me pleased I brought them out.

“It looks like it was torn and pasted from a page of a storybook,” Iris says.

They marvel at everything from the fountain shaped like a mountain to the well-manicured flowers that circle it and most of the stores with their colorful fronts.

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