Page 11 of Not the Bodyguard's Princess
“Paul. Should I answer it?” Miss Lee held out her phone.
“Yes.”
Miss Lee answered on speaker. “Hello, Paul.”
“Where are you going?”
“Taking Princess to a dog park.” Jordan crossed her eyes.
Assuming the bugs belonged to Hearthfire, Andrew must have gotten them all, or they wouldn’t have needed to ask. Or the bugs were someone else’s. Like an unethical paparazzi member or an unknown threat.
“Without any bodyguards?” Paul’s voice grew louder.
“Andrew Hastings is with me.”
“He isn’t your bodyguard.”
“I’m not working at the moment.”
“Your safety on location is our responsibility.” Too bad Paul hadn’t thought about that yesterday before setting up the media at the airport.
“It’s late Sunday afternoon at a dog park. I think Mr. Andrew can watch me play with Princess. And keep any old ladies in the area from pestering me.”
“Stu and his team are following you. Wait for them before getting out of the car and don’t pull this stunt again.” The line went dead, and Jordan put the phone away.
Paul wasn’t in the SUV. Good to know, he was micromanaging but not into doing the work himself. Andrew took the next left, sending the GPS into panic take-a-U-turn mode. “Do you mind if I take the most scenic route? I want to talk, and I’m sure my car isn’t bugged.”
“Do you think the bugs in my room were from Paul?”
“Possibly. Their response time for knowing you’d left the building was slower than I anticipated.” If the security team had been using the bugs to watch her, they hadn’t monitored them well.
“They don’t track me like Blake does. He knows I’m going to sneeze before I do. Did Blake’s team give you their app?”
“Yes. I downloaded it last night. The same company that designed ours designed it.” The Hasting’s app had more bells and whistles than Blake’s, which was to be expected considering the designer was a Hastings’s client.
“Then you are more likely to know where I am than Hearthfire is. They don’t use any apps. My panic word isaglet.”
“Interesting choice.”
“I chose it years ago because Blake didn’t know what it meant. I thought I was so smart.”
Andrew chuckled and turned another corner. “I remember usingagletin a sentence for the first time, and I was disappointed when everyone in my family already knew the word. But I rarely know anything first.”
“You’re the youngest, aren’t you?”
“Yes. And no one lets me forget it.”
“I’ve wondered what having siblings would be like in real life. Many of my early roles were as the little sister in the family. But then I had all the funny lines. I assume that isn’t the way it is in real families.”
“I never had the witty lines. Those went to the twins. I used to pretend I was their triplet.” Andrew took another left. “It didn’t work out so well. Not that they were mean or anything, but they have a level of communication I’ve never shared.” Miss Lee was easy to talk to, and he was talking too much. He’d taken this detour to get some things covered without prying ears. Andrew changed subjects. “I have a first-floor room at the hotel. As far as Princess is concerned, it’s ideal as it has a door that leads directly to a three-by-five-foot patch of grass. I’m close to the stairwell, so I can get to your third-floor room fairly fast—not as fast as I’d like, but faster than if I was across the street.”
“I thought the hotel was full.”
“September had a reservation for two rooms on the days she was in for the shooting and pulled some strings. She rented a house yesterday before retiring home.” It hadn’t been quite that easy, but Miss Lee didn’t need to know the particulars. Fortunately, Mr. Blake’s crew had deep pockets and had paid to have a guest moved to a sister hotel for an upgrade.
“I’m glad. Did Blake’s people tell you about the threats I’ve received? And about their suspicions?”
“The ones starting in May after this new bodyguard policy?”
