Page 63 of First Star I See Tonight (Chicago Stars 8)

He had been. The image of Piper turning into a one-woman SWAT team to protect him from whatever she defined as a threat wasn’t anything he cared to contemplate. “No more guns,” he said, after she’d gone to the terrace to bag up the pieces of the drone.

“You grew up on a ranch,” she protested.

“And I can shoot. But that doesn’t mean I want ’em around me in the city.”

She looked up at him and grinned. “Admit it. That was one hell of a shot.”

A shot he doubted he could have made. “Respectable.”

She laughed and picked up her jacket from the kitchen barstool. “Good news. I’ve decided to take that bouncer job you offered me.”

He should have anticipated this. “Forget it. The offer’s off the table.”

“And why’s that?”

“You only want the job now because you’ve decided I need a bodyguard. In my own club!”

“Nonsense. You can take care of yourself.”

She said it with an absolute sincerity that didn’t mean a thing. He was caught in a dilemma. He needed her, wanted her, but on his terms, so he poked his finger toward her forehead. “If I hire you, you’re a

bouncer—only there to take care of the women.”

“Of course.”

“No bodyguard needed. None.”

“Understood. Completely understood.”

“Okay. You can have the job.”

“Great.”

As she walked back into the kitchen, all he could think was—shit, now he had a bodyguard.

She grabbed her jacket and turned back into the Woman of Steel. “There won’t be any more physical contact between us. Not while I’m working for you. Agreed?”

She wasn’t the only one who could dish out crap. He rested his shoulder against the refrigerator door and gave her his laziest drawl. “Now, sweetheart . . . Do you really think you can keep your hands off me?”

Then he kicked her out.

***

Piper fingered the broken wing of the drone. She’d pieced together enough to make out the model and manufacturer, but an online check and a couple of phone calls revealed that the company had sold thousands of these. The creepiest part was knowing this particular model offered live-streaming video. Whoever had sent it up had seen her heavy make-out session with Coop.

She gazed morosely out her office window into the parking lot. What had almost happened between them this morning was, in a way, worse than what had happened at the lighthouse, because she should have been prepared. She knew the effect he had on her, yet she’d been stupid all over again. No more. His body was forbidden. She drove the point home by giving herself a sharp slap on the cheek.

Faiza called, interrupting Piper’s self-flagellation. She was giddy with her newfound freedom, and full of stories that made Piper smile. They’d just ended their call when her phone chimed with a text from Eric.

Get my message? Dinner tonight?

Eric was her sexual savior, and she started thinking about where they’d go to do the deed. She didn’t like the idea of the ever-vigilant Jada seeing a man disappear inside her apartment. But Eric also had a roommate, and Piper was past the age of having sex while a bro played Call of Duty on the other side of the bedroom wall.

She went back to work. A routine online check to see if anything new had shown up about Spiral revealed a recent post on a local club life message board left there by somebody who called himself Homeboy7777.

Spiral is the best place in Chicago to score all kinds of good shit without getting stabbed or shot.

She’d stake her reputation on the fact that nobody was scoring much of anything at Spiral, now that Dell was gone. Registering herself as Wastoid69, she posted an appropriately obscene response, denouncing Homeboy7777 as a troll and Spiral as a “fucking drug wasteland only good for picking up the hottest chicks in the city.”

---