Page 22 of Even if It Hurts

I’d been rolling her name around in my head ever since Ada had casually introduced us as if she hadn’t known exactly what she was doing. As if I hadn’t replayed those few minutes in the coffee shop every day for the past nine months. As if I hadn’tjustadmitted to Rush that I looked for her every time I went there.

But it was more than that . . .

I didn’t waste my time thinking about women, yet for nearly a year, that was exactly what I’d done. Wasted minutes and hours and days thinking about a woman who had only crossed my radar because her carelessness had put her in danger.

She wasn’t the first person I’d saved in one way or another and wouldn’t be the last, but she’d been the only one who stuck. And all this time, she was Ada’s great-niece.

Again...the irony of this entire situation and the timing wasn’t lost on me.

After searching through her bag and not seeming to find what she was looking for, Lainey glanced around the messy living room I was struggling not to pay attention to before quickly standing and looking all around before she caught sight of the camera I was watching her through.

The second her eyes so clearly narrowed at the camera, at me, her words from before echoed through my mind.“It’s a little intrusive.”

I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt like I was invading on someone’s privacy before that moment, but I couldn’t shut down the feed fast enough. Once it was off my computer monitor, I raked my hands through my hair and down my face as I sank back in my chair.

I watched and studied people for a living. I protected people. The cameras had always been in my apartment as a security measure. And now that a virtual stranger was there with the last tie to my brother, it should be nothing to keep the feeds up to make sure Kaia was okay.

But I’d clicked into them as soon as the motion sensor had gone off in my office and had watched the way Lainey held herself and moved. The way she’d let her hair down and played with all those long, wild curls before putting them up in another equally messy pile on top of her head as she’d read through the contract portion of our employment form.

I hadn’t been able to stop watchingher, and I needed to.

She was a distraction, and I couldn’t afford a distraction. Not when my careers had always been my life. Not when she was related to Ada, and I needed her for Kaia. Not when I was struggling to come to terms with my biggest failure.

With another harsh sigh, I leaned forward and tapped the intercom button on my desk phone. “Morning meeting in fifteen,” I said before disconnecting, the words holding an edge that wasn’t usually there.

If anyone else heard it, I hoped they assumed it was from everything else falling apart in my life and not because of the blonde clouding up my thoughts.

With a harsh shake of my head, I forced myself to focus on everything I’d missed—and the others had been handling—the past few days; making notes on what I needed to address in the meeting.

But by the time I left for it, I was more irritated than before because every time I got a notification that there was movement in my apartment, I found myself wanting to click into the feeds for more reasons than needing to assure myself that Kaia was okay. Dangerous reasons.

“We have the Ru Tech summit tomorrow afternoon,” I announced once I was in the room, then glanced at the five other members of my team. “They’re expecting four thousand people and have the typical security for the event. We’ll?—”

“Yeah, but can we talk about why you’re more irritated than usual?” Adam Thatcher asked from where he was sitting with his feet propped up on the conference room table. All casual indifference and a knowing smirk.

I glanced from him to the others’ expectant stares before setting my glare on him. “I hope you’re not dumb enough to ask me that right now.”

“You’re snapping,” Mallory Monroe said, loosely waving her stylus at Thatch as if to say she agreed with him.

“We’ll be escorting the CEO to and from the event, as well as in and out of the building,” I said instead, continuing with the meeting and ignoring their comments. When a few seconds passed without anyone adding anything else, I went on. “Gray and Evans, you’ll be driving in the convoy and staying with the vehicles during. Monroe, the CEO’s people left a note stating they heard we had a female and requested the biggest, scariestmenonly...”

“Every time,” she muttered irritably, tossing her stylus onto the table.

“So, you’ll be taking lead on this one,” I added, letting my mouth lift in the beginnings of a smirk. Thatch punched Monroe’s shoulder when she just sat there, trying to conceal her excitement, and I shrugged. “If they have something to say about it, they can take it up with me.”

“You sure that’s a good idea, Briggs?” Hudson Gray asked, his drawl bordering on taunting as he stared down Monroe from across the conference table. “The last time you let Monroe do detail for a high and mighty misogynist, he thought she was a gift for him.”

“And he quickly found out I wasn’t,” Monroe reminded Gray through clenched teeth.

Gray shrugged, not bothered in the least by her glare that promised so much pain for bringing up that lawsuit-filled nightmare. “Not your fault you’re so pretty,” he said with a wink, goading her.

“I’m going to kill you,” she whispered, sounding like she might be thinking of all the ways she wanted to. “Slowly.”

“Promise?”

“Taunt her all you want,” I muttered and flashed a warning look in Gray’s direction. “She’s lead tomorrow, and you’ll be outside because I can’t trust you if anything goes wrong concerning her.”

“That was one time,” Gray shot back defensively.

---