Read The Socialite and the Bodyguard for Free Online Page B

conversation once the flight attendant passed. “Same as war. Man-to-man combat.”
    Nash thought of some of the fights he’d bled through where he’d cut people’s throats without a second thought and put more bullets through more hearts than he’d cared to count. “I’m sure.”
    Kayla slept in her window seat next to him in the back. Since he was the newest member of the team, he’d wanted to spend some time with her going over con cerns and questions, which they had done for the first hour or so after the plane had taken off. Then she’d passed out from exhaustion.
He would have thought she’d overdone the partying the night before, but her manager had mentioned a late meeting with some business partners.
    Her laptop stood open on the beverage tray in front of her. From the corner of his eye, Nash caught a small window opening on the screen. You have a new message.
    “Civilian life is different than the military.” Mike puffed his chest out. “Just watch what we do and you’ll be all right.”
    “Thanks.”
    “And don’t push her.” Dave nodded toward Kayla. “She doesn’t like that. She has plenty of other stuff to deal with. She needs her staff to be in her corner.”
    “She needs her staff to protect her,” Nash put in.
    She looked too young and more innocent than perhaps she’d ever been. If the tabloids could be believed, she’d had enough lovers to fill a football stadium. But right now she looked like a little girl who’d gotten into her mother’s makeup and her older sister’s closet. If that older sister were a pole dancer.
    “She ever get threatening messages?” he asked the men.
    “Just the dog. All she gets is fan mail,” Mike said.
    Dave rolled his eyes. “Tons of it.”
    “Who processes that?”
    Mike gave him a narrow-eyed look that transmitted a clear back off message, but did answer his question. “Her secretary.” Next to Nash, Kayla shifted in her sleep.
    He turned his head to get her out of his peripheral vision.
    He didn’t need another flash of those long legs, or creamy thighs. Hell, creamy everything. Enough of her breasts were uncovered for him to bury his face between them. He tamped down the heat that was beginning to tingle to life in the bottom half of his body.
    Her stylist should be strangled. Or given a bonus. His opinion on that flip-flopped about once a second.
    She was hot. Scorching. There was no denying that. But there was more to her than showed on the surface.
    He had a feeling that what he’d thought she was, what he’d seen of her on TV, was going to turn out to be her organization, a persona made up by a full staff. Her organization—the people around her, her schedule, her image—was like a machine. Since they’d met yesterday afternoon, he’d caught glimpses of the woman inside that machine, and was beginning to wonder if she wasn’t trapped in there.
    Don’t get sucked in .
    He took a drink of mineral water as Mike and Dave returned to their favorite subject and went on about the bloody combat that football really was, and how they were all warriors. Part of him itched to set them straight—if only to distract himself from Kayla—but another part of him knew it wasn’t worth it.
    Stick to the job , Welkins had said.
    Trouble was, she was the job. And he would have liked only too much to stick real close to her.
    If he had any brains, he would leave her to Dave and Mike, walk on back to coach and ask the first pretty woman he saw if she wanted to join the mile-high club with him. He had to get this restlessness out from under his skin.
Except, with Kayla Landon next to him, he didn’t feel like walking away.
    “I’m thinking the threats to the dog might have something to do with her. Could be someone wants us distracted while he goes after Kayla,” he told the two men, interrupting a playoff story.
    There was a brief pause as they gave him some hard looks.
    “ We protect her. You stay out of the way and keep your eyes on