The Survivor - Cristin Harber Page 0,12
study.
“That’s an antique,” she pointed out.
“I’m sure you care.” He leaned back. “Is that why you bleached your hair?”
Mandy lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know.”
“It’s more interesting than a zit,” he said.
Her jaw dropped, and she gaped at him. “That’s rude.”
“You should cut it short and wear makeup that’d match your nails. That’d be interesting.” He held out his hands to frame an invisible headline. “Second Daughter gone punk rock.” He chuckled. “Though I’m probably out of a job if you tell your mother that was my suggestion.”
She could picture the headline as well as her parents’ reaction and almost smiled, but the agent wasn’t serious. “What would you have done if you were me?”
“Instead of bleaching my hair?” he asked.
She tugged her hair over her face and fidgeted. “Yeah.”
He hummed as though giving her question serious thought. She had to commend his acting skills. It was more than she got out of the Vice President’s office, the White House communications staff, or her mother’s chief of staff when she complained. Everyone told her to ignore it. That was impossible when it encompassed everything in her life. Political pundits discussed puberty. Pseudo-psychologists offered unsolicited advice on raising teenagers in the public eye. Stylists suggested ways to make her uniform hipper. No one debated whether she’d signed up for this life.
“You could rip your braces off.” She opened her mouth as wide as the rubber bands would let her and waited until he acknowledged the railroad tracks cemented to her teeth.
Unimpressed, he rolled his wrist like she should keep trying.
She closed her mouth and tried another tactic. “You could hike your skirt up.” She waited for his discomfort level to rise. “Or go with everyone’s favorite suggestion, buy a padded bra.”
Undaunted, he hummed again as he thought. “I wouldn’t stuff my bra. I don’t think it would flatter my hips.”
She couldn’t help it. That time, she laughed. “I don’t know if it works that way.”
“Yeah, I don’t know shit,” he admitted.
A comfortable silence fell between them. He pulled out his phone—a definite no-no when on vice presidential babysitting duty—scrolled, then cracked up. She tilted to see what was so funny. The agent repositioned the screen. For the next five minutes, they laughed at clips of dogs.
A staffer walked into the library and stopped short. “I’m sure,” she said with a heavy dose of distaste, “there is a more comfortable place upstairs for you to spend your free time.”
“We’re pretty comfortable here,” the agent said. “But thanks for the suggestion.”
The woman harrumphed and theatrically retrieved the discarded newspaper from the coffee table. “Please don’t put anything on the table again.”
After they were alone again, Mandy turned her attention onto the agent. “I can’t believe you said that.”
“You warned me about the table.” He shrugged. “Guess I should’ve known.”
The corners of her lips quirked. “So you’re the new guy?”
He nodded. “Yup.”
“I don’t know if you’ve been told.” She picked at her cuticle. “But no one wants this detail.”
“I’ve been warned about that, too.” He put the phone down, then ticked off on his fingers as he said, “You cut school, ditch details, and somehow bleached your hair when no one was lording over you.”
“And I’m just getting started,” she warned.
He chuckled. “I’ll tell you a secret.”
Oh, joy. This was the moment when he became like every other agent. Maybe he’d regale her with tales about his adventurous youth or teenage angst or promise that nothing she could do would shock him. “What?”
“I’ve got a hundred bucks riding on whether or not I make it as your primary detail for more than a month.”
Her eyes bulged. “You bet on me?”
“I’ll split it with you fifty-fifty if we make it to day thirty-one.”
Was he genuinely this chill, or had the Secret Service partnered with FBI profilers to determine a new way to handle her? “Double or nothing, you won’t last the week.”
He stuck out his hand. “Shake on it.”
Mandy eyed him, waiting for the usual curl of dread that always arrived over the last few weeks when she saw her new bedroom, read the new rules, or met her new lead security detail. It didn’t come. She didn’t trust him yet and probably never would. But at least she could have some fun. Their hands clasped. “Bet.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
PRESENT DAY
ABU DHABI, UAE
Walking down the stairs had been every bit as uncomfortable as Hagan had assumed it would be. Still, that balls-aching, depleted-muscle soreness didn’t keep his red-blooded mind from wandering to the unknown woman. He wasn’t