Page 3 of Songbird
“Taking a fucking leak—”
He glances at Rosalie and then cuts off without finishing his sentence. Instead, he kneels just outside the open doorway, presses his fingers to Linley’s throat, and then runs a qualified hand over her still form.
“She’s breathing,” he reports before speaking into his earpiece. “Linley’s down. Wound to the lower left flank. Head contusion. Blood loss. Suspect apprehended. We need backup and paramedics.”
Rosalie’s attacker lurches again, throwing himself against me and smashing his head into the floor hard enough to break a fucking tooth. Brewer produces a set of handcuffs, and I shift my position to give him room to snap them around the guy’s wrists.
The knife lies discarded on the white carpet, staining the pristine wool with bright red blood.
I glance at Rosalie. Her breathing is shallow and her gaze is glassy. She opens and closes her free hand like she’s trying to work feeling back into her fingers.
When I’m confident that Brewer has the guy in hand, I let my teammate drag him into the hall and cross the room to Rosalie. The candelabra falls from her hand as I reach her, and though my heart is racing, it manages to speed up again with worry at how hard she’s trembling. I pick up her hands, knowing and not caring that I’m not supposed to touch her unless it’s to protect her, but at the clammy chill of her skin, I decide touch is a kind of protection, and one I’m only too happy to provide.
She grips me like she’s afraid to let go.
“I can’t feel my lips,” she tells me as her attention drifts toward the open doorway, then the bloody weapon, and back to her hands engulfed between mine. “They’re… cold? I can’t feel them. I can’t feel my lips.”
My gaze drops to her mouth, pale and almost purple at the tips of her plump cupid’s bow, and Rosalie’s lashes flutter as her tongue sweeps out a little. I lean into her, wishing I could hold her and warm her with my body, but I can’t. I’m her bodyguard. She has a boyfriend. There are a hundred reasons this is wrong, including the way Rosalie leans into me too.
In the end, it doesn’t matter that I do the right thing. That I put duty and honor before temptation and resist the way Rosalie’s verybeingdismantles all my carefully constructed defenses. It doesn’t matter that I’m always the good guy, because the next day, I get fired.
one
Rosalie
Thedressisnice.The dress is fine. The dress is… Well, it’s… it’s kind of…
Oh, who am I kidding? This dress isbeautiful. It’s breathtaking and romantic and fits me like a song. The way I love it makes my throat close—but not in a good way.
I lay my palms flat against my middle. Tiny beads and threaded sequins stab my skin and make me press a little harder. A hundred tiny pinpricks feel a thousand times better than being strangled by this existential dread.
My personal assistant Lauren hovers at my shoulder. “Wow. You look gorgeous, Rosalie. And I’m not saying that because you pay me to. I say it with my whole chest and an obsession with bridal couture to back me up. This dress is going to break the Internet.”
I manage a smile despite the queasy roll of my empty stomach. She’s such a liar. Maybe not about the dress but about everything else.
Violet James, the designer responsible for my dream dress, drops her eyes and fusses with the lace falling off my shoulders to hide the self-conscious rise of color in her cheeks.
“It really is stunning,” I tell her, because it’s true, and it’s not Violet’s fault I’m in this mess. “Stunning and… perfect.”
She replies with a shy smile before stepping back and regarding my reflection in the enormous three-way mirror. “When I saw this lace in Paris, with all the roses and the birds hidden in the detail, I had to have it, even though I had no clue how I might use it. Now I can’t imagine it on anyone but you.”
I force down a swallow, square my shoulders, and face the picture in the mirror. Blonde curls. Blue eyes. Small stature. It’s me… and it’s not me. I’m having an out-of-body experience. I pinch some of the softer fabric between my fingers, exploring the texture until it brings me back to earth.
Oh, God. I can’t do this. I can’t get married. Not wearing the most incredible dress I’ve seen in my life… to a man with the ugliest heart I’ve ever known.
Breathe, I remind myself.Just breathe.
I lift my chin and then my skirt, step off the carpeted dais onto the hardwood floor of Violet’s San Francisco design studio, and instantly lose three inches. In bare feet I’m barely five foot tall. I cross to the wall covered with sketches and photographs and fabric swatches and point to a glossy page torn from a magazine. Although I’ve been here a dozen times, I discover something new at every fitting, and in this picture, a curvy model stares down the lens wearing a fuchsia-toned bra-and-panties set underneath a matching lace-trimmed robe.
“Is this your new lingerie line?” I ask.
Violet materializes at my side and runs her fingertips across the paper. “Yes. It’s mostly mulberry silk in vibrant colorways as well as classic neutrals. Every piece is simple but sensual.Designed to make the person wearing it feel confident and comfortable in their own skin. Beautiful. Sexy.”
What I wouldn’t do to feel confident again. At home in my own skin. Beautiful. Sexy. Like a person and not a product. Desired for the right reasons. Someone a man wants to earn instead of just another investment he owns.
“I’ll take one of everything,” I say. “In white, black, and coral pink.”
Violet’s brows shoot up. “One ofeverything?”
