Page 39 of Not the Bodyguard's Princess
“Why, bro? Something to hide? Park on the side.”
Andrew avoided the question. “I see cameras on the doors. I assume you have this house fully secured.”
“Yes. September wanted Harmony with her, so she nixed the hotel. There’s even a toddler-sized playhouse in the backyard.”
“Is Harmony old enough for one?” Andrew shut off the car and untangled Princess from her doggy car seat. “I wonder how Princess is with babies.”
“FYI, you might be hired to guard the dog, but Harmony comes first if there’s a dispute.”
“Agreed. Niece over dog.” Andrew checked the fenced backyard. “Hey, Princess, looks like you can run free.” He let the dog loose in the fenced yard and entered the house through the kitchen door. Mom stood at the counter mixing something in a bowl. September sat in front of the highchair coaxing Harmony to eat pureed peas, judging from the greenish smears covering his niece’s chin. Through the door, he could see one of the Hastings guards in the front room.
“Where’s Jordan?”
“What, no ‘Hello, Mom’?”
Andrew gave his mom a side hug and a kiss on the cheek. “If I’d said ‘Hello, Mom’ to you first, you would have scolded me for not checking on my client.”
“My understanding is that your client is the one digging up the flower bed. But since you need to know, I told Jordan to lie down in my room. You better go rescue that garden before that mutt makes a bigger mess.”
Tonie entered the kitchen. “I’ll go get the dog. It’ll give me a chance to practice my dog-grooming skills before someone wonders why I don’t know the tail from the ears.”
Mom used a teaspoon to point the way to Jordan. “Upstairs, second door on the left.”
The door was half open, but Andrew tapped anyway. “May I come in?”
Jordan sat with her knees hugged to her chin in a chair by the window. She nodded.
“Do you mind if I leave the door open?”
A half smile graced her face. “Is it worse to be overheard or have people wonder why we closed the door?”
“If you’re worried about eavesdroppers, I’m the only other person in the house who signs. No, I take that back. I’ve been teaching Harmony a few signs. But she can’t interpret for anyone else and beyondmama,dada, andmilk, she isn’t much of a conversationalist. If you don’t want to be overheard, we can sign.”
“What, no cookie?” Jordan signed.
Andrew kept his hand in his pockets. “Not yet. I don’t want to teach her any signs that’ll get September upset with me. Did you meet my mom?”
“She took one look at me and told me to go take a nap. Do I look like I need one?”
Andrew drew circles around his eyes with his finger. “Not so much tired as exhausted in a mental or emotional way I can see around the eyes. Mom is making her brownies—a cure-all.”
“One of Grandma’s cooks used to make me brownies all the time until the nutritionist told her to stop.”
Andrew took a seat on the bed. He didn’t want to bring up the scene they’d played in the trailer, and yet he found he was helpless to calm the tension in the room. “This house is fully secured. I wouldn’t say your panic word anywhere in the house; it will set off security.”
“The house is listening to us? Isn’t that like Stu’s bugs?”
“The system listens passively for panic words. It’s listening for September’s and Mom’s words in addition to yours. Kind of like when you talk to your phone and have to use a certain phrase to get it to respond.”
“That isn’t very comforting.” Jordan rolled her eyes. “Judging by the discussions I see on my social media, my phone is listening all the time. The week we shotPrincess Sam Sails the Seventh Sea, I kept getting ads for yachts and life vests.”
“The episode where you spent a third of the show in a rubber raft?”
“Yeah, so maybe I needed a life preserver.”
Andrew signed “rolling on the floor with laughter,” then spoke. “The only video in the house is on the entry doors and in Harmony’s room. Most babies have no expectation of privacy. And anyone with the Hastings app can turn off the audio feeds for any room.”
Jordan dropped one leg to the floor. “So you can turn off the audio in here?”
