Rugged Guard - Jason Collins Page 0,3

my tone.

“Is there a bathroom down here, too?” Derek seemed to sidestep the question.

And I felt myself deflate in response. “Yes, there’s a bathroom off to the side.”

“But if someone’s down here, there’s not another exit, right?” he clarified. “The only way out is up these steps?”

“That’s right.”

“Good to know.”

“I designed the place,” I added, even though he hadn’t asked. “The basement area, I mean. And a few of the other rooms, too, but those mostly follow the same design.”

“Good for you,” Derek offered, his tone flat. “It looks like a lot of work went into the place, so, congrats.”

What the hell?

Is he being sarcastic?

Or was he just genuinely unimpressed by all the work I’d done?

I wanted to ask him about a billion follow-up questions but before I could Derek was already headed back up the steps. “We should get going. The more I know about the place, the better I can observe the perimeter.”

“Observe the perimeter. Sure. Got it.” I kept my voice low as I followed behind Derek, trailing him back up the staircase.

Derek Lavine.

I’d gotten his full name from Viv before she’d left the B&B. I’d asked for it under the guise of security, wanting to make sure that the guy guarding me had a clean record himself.

But really, I just wanted to type his name into a search engine and see what came up.

Although, the only thing I learned about Derek from searching his name was that he wasn’t a big fan of social media. It looked like all he had was an Instagram account with zero posts. He might’ve also had a Facebook account, but if so it was locked so only his close friends and family were able to see his profile.

Fuck.

What the hell was I doing right now?

Why was I trying to find out more about Derek? It wasn’t like he’d shown even one iota of interest in me today. His only emotions seemed to range from mildly disinterested to completely cold, which made our every interaction feel like I’d been the one doing most of the talking.

And yet, I couldn’t get him out of my head. There was just something there when it came to Derek, something I wanted to figure out, something I wanted to solve. I just had such a nagging feeling that there was something lurking underneath all that coldness, something intriguing and warm right below the surface.

Or maybe I was just obsessing over him because he was so goddamn hot.

I let out a deep sigh and fell back against my bedsheets, my gaze staring right up at the ceiling.

And then, I turned my gaze down to the floor below.

Derek had claimed the basement room as his own, explaining to me that it was the best vantage point in the B&B. He’d said that its lack of entrances made it nearly impossible for anyone to ambush him, if things ever got to that point, and its connection to the steps made it so he would be able to hear anyone or anything coming, with enough time to make other plans.

Make other plans.

I quietly wondered if that phrase had been directed at me. Had Derek noticed that I hadn’t been able to take my eyes off of him? That I’d been daydreaming about his lips pressed against my own since the first moment we met?

I let out another sigh and closed my eyes, trying to force myself to sleep. But despite my efforts at getting some shuteye, I spent the next hour or two tossing and turning in my sheets, my brain feeling like it was short-circuiting every time I remembered that Derek Lavine was somehow sleeping in the same building as me, that he was sleeping right underneath me.

Fuck.

Why did he have to be so goddamn hot?

2

Derek

I’d had much tougher jobs than guarding Parker Williams.

Honestly, I was surprised that Viv had called me in at all. We’d been friends ever since we’d met in the army, keeping up with each other as the years went by. I knew she’d started her own P.I. business, and she knew I’d started my own private security business, our lives sometimes even intersecting as we coincidentally worked with the same clients.

Sometimes working together was much less of a coincidence. Viv seemed to call me in when she was working something big, typically involving either a lot of cash or a lot of crime, the kind of cases where she could become a target herself if she wasn’t careful enough with what she stuck