Page 24 of Dragon Bodyguard
But there was nothing. No more noises to disturb the quiet. Perhaps it had been Mrs. Barley. But her instincts were yelling at her that it definitely hadn’t been Mrs. Barley, and if she’d thought that coming to this house meant she was safe, then she’d been sorely mistaken. At least as long as she was left by herself.
Where the hell was Misha? She knew he’d stationed two men outside her door, but why hadn’t he stayed? Why should she have to ask?
Thinking of him meekly remaining in her bedroom, sitting on her bed waiting for her to emerge from the bathroom, brought a smile. Misha never sat meekly for anyone. He was busy. He was working. She still found it frustrating. Irrationally so. She’d heard a noise, hadn’t she? Didn’t that mean that he was most needed wherever she was? Didn’t he have a duty to her half-cousin to protect whoever was a guest in his house? Was she not a guest? Was she not, therefore, a direct part of that duty?
She was.
She rose to her feet, stepped out of the tub, and toweled off. Wrapping herself in the provided bathrobe, she walked up to the door and paused.
What if there was someone waiting for her on the other side? What if they’d crept in and were just standing there, ready to pounce on her?
Ice tickled her nerves’ endings, making goosebumps spread over her arms. These ones weren’t as pleasurable as the ones Misha had produced.
Don’t get side-tracked, she told herself.Focus on the possible murder about to occur.
Hers.
“Okay,” she whispered, reaching for the doorknob while thinking it was better to know than to spend the rest of the evening hiding in the bathroom.
There was no point in looking for a weapon when she knew the bathroom would only provide towels and she couldn’t very well choke a possible assassin to death with one of those when her only skill level was creating a perfect turban for drying her hair.
She yanked the door open, standing with her legs spread in a defensive stance and stared into the empty room.
She let out her once-again-held breath, shoulders sagging with relief.
“Okay,” she repeated.
Time to get dressed and go find herself a professional bodyguard.
The men outside the door didn’t count.
***
Of course, they came with her. Both of them. Like little shadows where she only wanted one big shadow to follow her around. Not that they were little. They were as tall and broad as Misha was. She found it a bit annoying that they wouldn’t leave her alone since they took away her perfectly worked up self-righteousness that had sent her roaming the hallways in search of that professional bodyguard to begin with.
She couldn’t very well ask Misha where the hell he had gotten off to and lean on the fact that she needed protection when he’d seen to it that she had it. And more than adequate protection at that. He wouldn’t have put anyone on her detail that wouldn’t be able to knock the living daylights out of anyone even so much as breathing in her direction the wrong way; she was convinced of that much. Obviously because he was a professional, and he took his position very seriously.
“Where is it you want to go?” one of the men asked her.
He was the taller of the two, dark-haired and brown-eyed, where the other was fair with green eyes. She liked them both, if she was honest. They’d kept guard outside her door the previous night, and she’d had a brief chat with them that morning to convince them to let her stalk off on her own to find Misha. She should ask their names.
“What’re your names?”
They shared a glance.
“I’m Fabian,” the dark-haired said.
“Konstantin,” the fair one said.
“Fabian, Konstantin,” she greeted. “I would like to have a word with your boss.”
“Mr. Kuznetsov’s not back yet,” they both said in one voice.
“No, not him,” she said. “I meant Misha. Do you know where he is?”
“I can text him and tell him where to meet you,” Fabian informed her, clearly unwilling to give away any more information.
“He’s not here then?” she asked innocently.
