its way down her throat. She sighed happily. “Ahhh. Um, well, he thinks he’s my bodyguard.”
“Your bodyguard,” Sam repeated slowly. “That’s…a new one to me.”
Laura grimaced. “Yeah, you and me both. Truthfully, he showed up while I was at urgent care. Said that Blede and Kristin had asked him to come check in on me, to make sure I was okay. They wanted to ‘make things right’. This, I guess, is how they do it.”
Again she left out details, such as the offer of money, and her counter offer of seeing a dragon up close.
“Right. So you’d never met him until today?”
“Last night,” she corrected. “He stood guard at my room all day. I honestly did not expect him to take it so seriously, but there he is.”
She said it with mild frustration, but the truth was, Laura was moving past that, slowly but surely. Even now she found herself wishing he was there. Just in case, even if she knew that no threat was coming.
“Don’t you find it, I don’t know…imposing on you? Like he’s always there?” Sam asked. “At least he’s hot.”
Laura found herself absently chewing on her lower lip. “Yeah,” she agreed after a moment of reflection. “Yeah he is that,” she said with a laugh, “I can’t fight you about that one.”
Rakell was gorgeous. Tall, muscular, tanned. Tight skin over good bones, well-groomed facial hair. Eyes that lit up the room. Lips that just begged to be—
She sat up straight, trying to pull herself together. That was not what she was supposed to be thinking about with him. He was not a pin-up poster for her to drool over. Laura was a grown adult, and she was going to handle herself like one!
Cute butt though.
“You don’t find his presence to be irritating?” Sam pressed.
“Umm.” How was Laura supposed to answer that question? “He’s…really rather, what’s the word, like, not noticeable?”
“He’s gotta be six and a half feet tall,” Sam pointed out. “How is that ‘not noticeable’ in any way?”
“I don’t know,” Laura said with a laugh. “You make a point but he’s just not. Though, it’s only been a few hours. I slept through most of the night, and he was outside my hospital bed thing, you know, other side of the curtains. So he wasn’t there. We’ve been home for half an hour, so it hasn’t really sunk in yet. Still, I don’t feel like I need him, so I don’t see him being here long.”
She declined to mention the way she’d reacted to the doorbell, or the knife she’d pulled from the wall before going to greet Sam that morning. That was just a random thing. She’d been startled, and the knife had been held just right. That was all.
How do you explain your wish that he was here, now, then?
The simple truth was; she couldn’t explain it. Not to herself, and most certainly not to Sam.
“I wish one of those guys would show up for me,” Sam said wistfully. “That would just be awesome. A giant sex god bursting down my door and sweeping me off my feet. Who am I to object to something like that? If Rakell showed up for me, why I’d—”
“I’m sure there’s one out there for you somewhere,” Laura interjected, fighting back a sudden surge of irritation. She didn’t want to imagine Sam with Rakell. “Though I am not with Rakell. Not like Kristin and Blede, that’s for sure,” she pointed out emphatically.
Laura didn’t want any confusion or rumor to be spread, so she was cutting it off early. Sam was already showing signs of assuming that the two of them were, well, intimate, and Laura wanted to ensure the rumor mill did not get started.
“Really? I would be all over that,” Sam said, making approving noises.
“He’s attractive, the entire family is,” Laura agreed readily, her mind lingering on an image of Rakell. “Still, he’s just here as a formality, to make his family feel good after I got dropped on my head because someone was after Blede’s money.”
“Yeah, how are you doing anyway?” Sam asked. “We’ve been so caught up on the actual kidnapping attempt itself, which is just so crazy, that I never actually asked you how are you now? How’s the head? What did the doc’s say?”
“I’m fine,” Laura said. “Seriously, that’s what they said. Kept me awake for ages, made sure I don’t have a serious concussion or brain swelling, bleeding, etc, so they said. I guess I’m tired, that’s accurate. Running mostly on