Page 1 of Full Mountie

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Lachlan

May

Torture is workingside-by-side with the woman you adore—and can’t touch.

It’s a gorgeous spring afternoon in Ottawa, and outside Centre Block on Parliament Hill, flowers are blooming and people are milling around, waiting for the prime minister’s arrival.

As his chief of security, I give that go-ahead. This final sweep of the event site should be my only consideration at the moment. I shouldn’t be thinking about Beth.

But I know exactly where she is, and have from the second I stepped outside. After a year, the way she affects me shouldn’t be a surprise anymore. And yet I still find myself wondering why my head is spinning, why my core pulls tight…then she smiles and there’s no mystery at all.

Most days, we work within arm’s reach of each other. Close enough for me to memorize the elegant line of her neck, the curve of her cheekbones, the way her hazel eyes glitter differently in every light.

Definitely close enough for me to know better than to indulge a crush fueled by lusty desires, because that very closeness is exactly why she’s off-limits.

Beth Evans quietly and efficiently runs the prime minister’s world. She’s his executive assistant, his calm and steady gatekeeper.

I. Can’t. Touch. Her.

I’m not the kind of guy Beth deserves. I’m complicated and kinky. And even her tentative, curious explorations over the last year have been adorably vanilla.

The one time she got a real glimpse at my depravity, she was horrified.

Not that she stayed horrified, though. That would have been easier to handle. If anything, the chemistry between us has ratcheted up lately.

I still can’t touch her.

And I want to with every aching part of my soul.

Now I search for her, as I always do, and unerringly, I find her in seconds. She pauses her conversation and looks up, as if she can feel my gaze.

Moments like this burn at me. If only… But there’s no way to finish that statement.

Then the tension ebbs as she takes a deep breath and returns to her task at hand, but it doesn’t take her long to wrap it up. I watch her the whole time as she walks across from where she’d been chatting with the catering manager. She gives me a cool, professional smile. “Good to go?”

I return the exact same expression, but where she looks right at me, I can’t bring myself to hold her sharp gaze. I have to look just above her head. “Yep.”

“Lachlan…”

“Not now.”

“No, you don’t get to tell me that.” She sighs as my radio crackles. “Or maybe you do. Saved by the bell.”

She’s been trying to talk to me for two days now about something personal, and I’ve been dodging her, because…

Well, because I’m a fucking idiot, mostly. But the shit between us is complicated, and two months ago it got even more complicated when Hugh Evans slammed back into my life.

“After the party,” I tell her, my heart sinking. I’m pretty sure she’s met a new guy. There’s a lightness to her step that’s been missing over the last year.

It’s a good thing.

Beth deserves all good things.

But it makes me want to crawl into a bottle of scotch and die.

Today, of all days. Today marks one year since we met, one year since Gavin was elected in a stunning upset, a come-from-behind victory that catapulted Beth from an ordinary Hill staffer to the Keeper of the PM’s Everything. One year since I walked into a meeting with the brand-new PM and his staff. I fell in love, head-over-fucking-stupid-heels with the sharp-eyed, smart-mouthed brunette with the legs that go on for miles.

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