“I don’t think so but what do I know? Lachlyn doesn’t talk!”
Reame knew that Lachlyn still hadn’t accepted their offer to become a full Ballantyne partner but in the eyes of the world she was assumed to be a very wealthy woman. As such, she was a target. Linc was right, she needed a bodyguard and to live in a place with excellent security.
And security was his business. “How does she feel about having security?”
Linc pulled a face. “She thinks I’m overreacting. She has this idea that she’ll be able to go back to work next week, that the furor will have died down by then. She’s dreaming if she thinks a haircut will make her look less recognizable.” Linc lifted his chin in Lachlyn’s direction and Reame finally, finally had an excuse to look at her again.
As he’d noticed earlier, her hair was now short and choppy. Her bangs twisted away from her face, revealing high cheekbones, those incredible sin-with-me-eyes, her made-to-be-kissed (but not by him) lips. Despite her two-inch heels, she still only reached his shoulder, and without her stilts she barely scraped five-two. Her body, despite her being a fairy, was all woman. Full and perky breasts, a waist he could span with his hands, long legs and round hips.
And a truly excellent ass.
“She needs protection, Ree.”
Reame groaned, wondering whom he had to kill to get another drink. He ignored the action in his pants and focused on business, on what Linc was asking him to do. He swallowed his sigh. If it was anyone else but Linc making the request, he’d decline the business. He didn’t have enough staff to meet the demand for personal protection officers as it was. Liam, his head of operations, was going to kill him. And Liam, being ex-military, as well, actually could follow up on his threat.
But this was Linc asking... “Let me call around tomorrow and have a chat with her, and you. What time are you leaving?”
“Midmorning,” Linc replied, briefly grasping Reame’s bicep in a show of his appreciation. “Thanks, bud. Will you please charge me or the firm? God knows we can afford it.”
Reame shook his head and, as he always did, ignored Linc’s request. After he left the military, Connor gave him his first job, had recommended him to his rich friends and clients and he’d lent him the capital to start up his security business. Together with Linc, Connor had been his biggest supporter and his best advertiser, and it was because of their support and loyalty that his company was now regarded to be the best in the city. His business had put his three sisters through college, paid for the fancy apartment he lived in, the repairs on his mom’s house. It employed many of his ex-army buddies and sent ridiculous amounts of money into his personal bank account.
For as long as he owned Jepsen & Associates, he would swallow any costs the Ballantynes’ personal security needs generated.
He owed Linc, his brothers and Connor a debt he couldn’t repay but he’d sure as hell try. Because, unlike his father, he believed in loyalty and responsibility.
He looked at life straight on, readily accepting that it was a series of waves and troughs, shallow waters and depths. All one could do was just keep swimming.
Reame looked across the room at Lachlyn and studied her exquisite profile, the horrible thought occurring to him that she might be the one woman who could make him drown.
* * *
The next morning, Lachlyn glanced down at the screen of her phone, thinking it was another call from a super-pushy reporter, but instead she saw the familiar number of her supervisor at the New York Public Library. Annie was not only her direct boss but the closest person she had to an older sister and best friend.
“Hey, hun, how are you holding up?” Annie asked as Lachlyn placed her flat palm against the cool window of the small upstairs living room of The Den.
“Fair to horrible,” Lachlyn said, pulling the drape aside to look down at the sidewalk. The crowd standing behind the wrought-iron fence was talking amongst themselves, although many cameras were pointed toward the front door. Somebody caught her movement and, almost immediately, a dozen cameras lifted in her direction. Lachlyn abruptly stepped back and ignored the muted roars for a comment, a photo opportunity, an interview. Rubbing her forehead, she slid down the wall until an expensive Persian carpet was all that separated her denim-covered butt from the rich wooden floors. “I can’t wait to come back to work next week.”
There was a long pause and Lachlyn’s stomach jumped. Annie was usually incredibly voluble and she didn’t do silence. “That’s not going to happen anytime soon, Lach.”
Lachlyn felt her headache intensify. “What do you mean?”
“There’s too much attention around you, on you. The phones have been ringing off the hook, people asking anyone and everyone for information on you. It’s mayhem, Lach, and you aren’t even here.”
The monster chomping its way through her stomach took another huge bite. “What exactly are you saying, Annie?”
“My supervisor is suggesting that you take all of your vacation time. It adds up to about two months.” Annie said in a tone that suggested she’d been practicing how to break the news.
“I don’t have a job anymore?” Lachlyn whispered, terrified that what she was hearing was her new reality.
“You don’t have a job for the next few months. After that, we’ll see,” Annie said, trying to sound jaunty. “Since, according to the press, money is no longer an object, you could tour the great libraries of the world, visit the museums you always talk about going to, see the amazing art you look at in books,” Annie said, her voice turning persuasive. “This is an opportunity, Lach, not a punishment.”
But Annie didn’t understand that, while she didn’t mind being alone, she hated not being busy, not having a purpose. Having nothing to do reminded her of her childhood, of long days and nights without company or conversation, with only an old television set for entertainment. Her mother would come home from work, pop some sleeping tabs she bought from the guy on the corner and pass out for the next fourteen or sixteen hours. Tyce was always out, selling his art in the park so that they could pay one of the many bills her mom couldn’t cover. The local library had been her favorite place to hang out and books her constant and unfailing friends. These days she spent most of her time alone but her work kept her busy.
“Lachlyn? Lachlyn?”
Lachlyn forced herself to blink, concentrating on the cool floor beneath her hand, allowing the noise from the photographers to drift up to her. Then she saw that the display screen on her phone still showed that she was connected to Annie.
“I’ve got to go, Annie.”
“Look,” Annie said, “if your situation changes I can have another talk with Martin.” But Lachlyn heard her underlying frustration, her Why would you want to spend your days digging through old papers when you could be shopping and seeing the world, playing the role of the Park Avenue Princess?
Nobody realized that accepting the money was the easy part. It was just a couple more zeroes—okay, a lot more zeroes—in her bank account. She could take it or leave it, spend it or give it away. It was the people involved that made this difficult, the fact that this wasn’t just a matter of moving cash around. The family dynamic of who and what the Ballantynes were and stood for made this situation complicated. A cold hand squeezed her lungs together and she deliberately slowed her breathing down and released her grip on her phone, shaking her hand to put blood back into her fingers. A few months earlier, when Tyce had told her that he was making plans for her to meet her biological family she’d thought that she’d meet the Ballantynes, have a meal with them and that they’d all go back to their very different lives.
She never expected to be offered a fat bank account, a limitless credit card, to be moved into The Den and to be hounded by the press. The possibility of being accepted as part of the family never crossed