“Okay, gentlemen.” Rachel, our office manager and tech expert, gets up from her desk and hands us all the same paper. I look down, and my stomach turns as soon as I see Kellie’s face in the corner. Kellie fucking Hudson with her megawatt smile filling her beautiful face and her long blond hair curled perfectly. I was in charge of her ten times, and each time, I had to sneak her in to see her new boyfriend. She was known as a serial dater. The press was all over her, wondering who her next boyfriend would be. When she started dating a new guy, she didn’t want anyone to know, so sneaking her in and out was my job. One time, I had a suitcase full of wigs. If the cops had pulled me over, it would have been interesting to try to explain that one. She would land, and I was tasked with making sure no one knew she was even in town. Each time was a success; no one even had an inkling.
The minute I saw her, something pulled me to her, but she had a boyfriend, so I shut that shit down. Or tried to. But every time she was near me, my heart sped up and my hands would get clammy. And each time, I reminded myself she was off limits and, more importantly, out of my league. Her visits with her boyfriend stayed the same, but she ended up staying with him less, and during the last couple of times, she spent more time with me in my car than with her boyfriend. Then it was over. I found out when it was plastered on the cover on the celebrity rags. Someone got a tip she was dating him, and now she wasn’t.
“Another boyfriend?” I ask sarcastically. “Great,” I mumble under my breath. Anthony finally comes into the room, excusing himself for being late. Rachel gives him the side-eye but hands him a paper. He scans it and flips the page over.
“No,” Rachel says and clicks a button on her desk. We are in the basement of the house we work out of, and this is really her domain or, as she calls it, her playground. Numerous computer screens hang on the four walls, displaying every single traffic camera we have access to—not that the city knows. But now different pictures of Kellie fill the screens, all of which she looks beautiful in. Even the one with a hood covering her head and wearing dark sunglasses so you can’t see her green eyes. “I’m assuming everyone knows Kellie.” She flicks a button again, and now it’s the picture on the sheet. “She is going on tour; her first ever tour in five years.” I start reading her stats, but I know them all already because she made me listen to her for a whole forty-five minutes once about her astrological sign. “Ninety days around the world. She will be traveling on a private plane or a tour bus, depending on her mood and her timeframe.”
“What does this have to do with us?” Dante asks from beside me. “Doesn’t she have her own security?”
Rachel shakes her head. “Not really. She has a driver, but …” She swallows and flips the button, displaying a letter on the screen most likely addressed to Kellie, but all the letters on the page have been cut out of magazines. “She received this first letter two months ago.” I read the letter, which is nothing out of the ordinary, just the typical I love you celebrity letter. “Then the second one came, and it was a little bit more.” I read the second one, and it starts to get a little bit over the top. “It’s basically the same, but now, he’s mad that she’s not writing him back.”
“Does she know?” I ask. Getting fucking angry, I put my foot on my knee. “Or is she still with her head in the clouds?”
“Whoa,” Dominic says from beside me, laughing, “someone is cranky.”
“She was told she got one letter, but I don’t know if they showed her the exact letter,” Hunter says. “Tommy called me yesterday, and he’s worried. This last one was delivered with one hundred long stemmed red roses, and the letter was straight and to the point.”
“What does that mean?” I ask, rolling my neck to the right and to the left.
“It means,” Rachel says and puts the letter on the screen, “someone is really fucking angry now.”
I read the note.
I saw these roses and thought of you. I saw pictures of you with another man, and it made me see red. When I finally make you mine, we’ll see if your blood is the same color as these roses.
With Love,
Yours Forever
The anger in my body radiates. I’m afraid I’m going to throw something across the room, so I shut it down and start to calm my breathing first. “So now that I got everyone’s attention,” Rachel says, going to sit down, “Tommy wants her under care twenty-four seven. He wants to make sure she isn’t touched or harmed. Basically, the only time she is to be alone is when she’s on stage.”
“Did he go to the cops?” Anthony asks, and Rachel shakes her head.
“No, he doesn’t want to draw attention to it if it’s nothing. A lot of crazed copycats come out of the woodwork when anything like this occurs, so we want to minimize the cuckoo factor by keeping this on the down-low.”
“Fucking idiot.” Dante says what I’m thinking. “How is she supposed to be cautious if she has no idea about the danger out there?”
“It’s why he wants us on her twenty-four seven,” Hunter says. “Now I know it’s a shitshow to be away from home for ninety days and living out of a suitcase.”
“Please don’t be me,” Dante starts to chant next to me, closing his eyes. “Please don’t be me.”
“I’ll do it.” The words are out of my mouth even before I know what the fuck is going on. Heads turn toward me, and Hunter just stays quiet. “I don’t have anything going on. Might as well get paid to see the world.” I shrug to try to play it off, hoping no one can see past the bullshit excuse.
“Then that settles it,” Anthony says, getting up from his seat. “I have a call to make.” Walking out of the room, Dominic and Dante also get up and walk out of the room.
“I want a list of the cities we are going to,” I say, looking at Rachel, and she just nods her head. “Then I want to go city by city.”
“Yeah, I’m already on it,” she says. “We need to cover our asses just in case. I’m going to have safe houses and a car ready in each city and also a secret escape route.”
“We meet with them this afternoon,” Hunter says from his chair. I look at him, and he’s leaning back in his chair, watching me. “Rachel.”
“Got it,” she says. Getting up, she walks out of the room, closing the door after her.
“Is this going to be a problem?” Hunter asks me, and I stand here with my hands on my hips looking at him. “Something about her sets you off.”
“Nothing about her does anything. She’s a client,” I point out, my chest rolling, “which means one thing. I’ll be the utmost professional security detail she’s ever seen.”
“Just so we are clear on this.” Hunter stands, and I take him in. He’s a good six foot four, which is two inches taller than me. But we have the same lean, muscular body type. I am a bit bigger than him, but it’s because I’m spending more time in the gym these days. “If the situation changes …”
“It’s not.” My voice is tight. “Just one thing. I don’t think it’s a good idea to keep all these letters from her.”