Her Hidden Falls Bodyguard Billionaire Cowboy - Taylor Hart Page 0,24

hurt. Because it wasn’t real.

“Can we just talk for a second?” He looked vulnerable, more like the man she knew and less like the agent who’d been ignoring her the last two hours.

Part of her yearned to talk, to explain, to rehash all the things she hadn’t been able to tell anyone the past three years. “Why? So you can remind me how much I betrayed everyone? Because I darn well know, and I hate myself for it.”

He frowned. “I found out about your past maybe ten minutes before you showed up. Listen, I’m trying to process it.”

Logically, she understood that, but she was hurt. She was hurt that he’d acted like he didn’t know her, like their relationship was simply one between an agent and a ward of the state. She couldn’t risk more feelings or vulnerability. “I’m going to bed.”

He followed her inside. “Are you hungry? I think the fridge is stocked. Should we eat?”

She grunted, thinking about how he’d often said the best part of any day was dinner with her. The memory gave her the same angry, abandoned feeling she’d had when Brian had died. She didn’t have Sean. Not as a friend, at least. “I don’t like dinner anymore.”

Chapter 10

Sean woke with a start and quickly jumped out of bed, gun in hand. He’d adjusted easily to becoming such a light sleeper. While he’d been growing up, his father had given him a BB gun for Christmas, and he’d slept with it for over a year. Early had been his schtick as a farm boy.

He listened for anything out of place. Nothing.

The neon clock next to the bed said it was five-thirty, but he didn’t mind getting up early. He crept to the door and down the hallway. Early to bed, early to rise, makes you healthy, wealthy, and wise. His mother had always quoted Benjamin Franklin to them.

The sun was just coming up, and light was filling the beach house. He hesitated next to Angela’s … Zoey’s room.

Carefully, he turned the knob, opened the door, and peered inside. She was in bed, fast asleep.

That figured. He couldn’t help but think about how many times he would stop at her shop on the way to work at ten in the morning and she would still be in bed. “I’m a late witch, not an early one,” she’d always say to him.

Dang. He shut the door and wished for the umpteenth time that everything about this situation was different. Did she even like astrology? He moved into the kitchen and turned on the coffee maker. The sun was peeking over the horizon, casting the sky in gorgeous colors.

Sean thought of the conversation he’d had with his brother Ryan last night. He’d used a burner phone he’d bought at a gas station. Everyone in Hidden Falls was okay, but terribly shaken up. Understandable.

There had been no point trying to hide anything from them. In fact, Sean had been pretty explicit with his brothers about what they might be up against. Obviously, the Cortez family knew that Zoey was with the FBI. Two of their people had died trying to get to her. His brothers and the whole town needed to be ready if these criminals came back.

They were, Ryan had assured him.

A wave of tiredness hit Sean, and he scrubbed a hand over his face. He didn’t mind early mornings, but he hadn’t slept well. If he’d slept at all. It’d been one of those nights where a person thinks and doesn’t really sleep.

After Angela—er, Zoey—had refused to eat and stayed in her room the rest of the night, he had been hyped up. He’d scoured the file and absorbed even more about Zoey Fletcher and her brother, Brian. About the coffee shop and her mother who had passed from cancer. Zoey had only told him that her mother had died a long time ago.

He’d eaten two disgusting freezer dinners. Then he’d done all the perimeter sweeps and hooked his phone app into the security feed around the place and in the main areas of the house. He had also reported to Agent Anderson. Of course, he’d sat at the kitchen table and read the whole file again.

He poured himself some black coffee. Zoey had always teased him that he didn’t want any fluff in his coffee.

He stared out at the sunrise, his mind still roiling with everything he had absorbed last night, all the details he’d learned in the past twelve hours. The woman he thought