Page 146 of Bodyguard By Night

I rolled my eyes and peeled off a sticker. He just didn’t want to talk about himself—and had left me to do all the work like a typical male.

I studied the sweet logo my sister had made or commissioned with their initials and a pair of rings. As I was trying to hold the sticker straight, the clomp of his boots came closer.

“Wait up.” He jogged to the table and held up four rolled-up towels and a sharpie.

“Where did you find those?”

“Storage.” He crowded in next to me and set down two rolled-up towels. “You said level and…”

“You’re such a smartie.” He set the bottle between the towels like a bumper. “Okay, line up the sticker like you want it.”

Carefully, I centered the sticker on the bottle. He uncapped the sharpie and made lines on the towels. I held up my hand. “Teamwork makes the dream work.”

He slapped my hand then stole my towels.

“Jerk.”

He grinned at me as he went around the table, his dimples making a rare appearance.

He would not win me over with dimples.

I made the marks on my towel, then I peeled off the leftover sticker paper to make sure the towels stayed in place.

“Now who’s the smartie?” He did the same and laid a bottle down in his makeshift sticker bed, slapped on a sticker, and set it on the other side of the table. “Only one-hundred-forty-three left.”

I set mine next to his. “One-hundred-forty-two.”

Once we got into a rhythm, they piled up fairly quickly. We worked in silence for a bit, but I wasn’t going to let him escape from story time.

I pulled out my phone and put on some Frank Turner.

“Tell me about your famous sister.”

“Maple? Not much to tell. She left home at eighteen and made the modeling world her bitch.”

“Not an easy thing to do.”

“No. She’s on the tall side like you, so that was one leg up. Her metabolism is one step away from needing medication, I swear. She can out-eat everyone, then take food off our plates when we are done.”

“She doesn’t look like a wire hanger like most models though.”

“Nah. She never wanted to be that girl.” He slid another bottle into the growing done pile. “She preferred doing the sexier Victoria’s Secret line, which only made me slightly violent. I went out and taught her self-defense on one of my days off.”

I sat back with a laugh. “I’m picturing you teaching a squad of models how to stomp and flip. Maybe gouge a few eyeballs.”

“Just what I did. Lots of creeps backstage at the shows. They usually have a lot of amazing people to balance it, but she can handle things on her own. I just can’t look at my baby sister in a push-up.”

“I’ve seen her. Impressive.”

“Stop.”

I looked down at my own less than impressive set. “No pushup on this planet could make me have curves there.”

He gave me a lazy grin. “A perfect mouthful.”

“Get back stickering, Mr. Charm.” But I couldn’t stop a smile. “So, what really happened to make your other sister go on a world tour?”

“Mags got caught up in being the perfect socialite. She and Reid were the perfect golden couple the summer before we started college. She’s only a year younger than me, but Mags was always a force. She wanted into our inner circle, so she got in there. Reid was so gone for her that it just seemed as if they would always be together.”

---