Gone - Anna Brooks Page 0,6

even pushing my own crap aside, I don’t know that I’m capable of treating her how she deserves. I may dream about how good it would be, but hurting her or not being what she needs? Those things are nightmares.

Speaking of nightmares, my dog needs to go for her morning walk before she gets pissy, so I shut the water off and get dressed, then trek through the paved trail behind my house with Judy before going into work.

Every time I get back from an assignment, I spend the entire next day completing the dreaded paperwork. When I signed on to be a bodyguard here at Royal, I never imagined there’d be so much of that shit.

“D, man, what the fuck?”

I lift my head to find Royce with his knuckles on my desk, confused amusement etched on his pretty boy face. “What?”

He chuckles as he sits down across from me. “I only said your name like four times. You good?”

“Yeah.”

He squints in disbelief. “You’re one of the most serious and honorable men I know, but you’re a shit liar.” I don’t give him the satisfaction of telling him he’s right, which is why I never play poker. “Who is she?”

“Nobody.”

He grins and rubs his hands together. “I knew it.”

Damn, I walked right into that one.

Royce isn’t gonna let it go until I give him something, and as much as I don’t want to share my shit with him, maybe having him tell me it’s not a good idea to be with her is all I need to hear in order to give up this infatuation I have with her. “She’s nobody you know. Hell, I don’t even know her, which is precisely the problem.”

“So get to know her.”

That wasn’t what I expected him to say. I wanted to hear the opposite of that. “It’s not that easy.”

He crosses his arms, waiting for me to tell him why it’s complicated. When I don’t give him anything because I really don’t have a legit reason, he changes the subject. “Do you have your report from the Barrington transport?”

“Finishing it up right now.”

“Cool. Q mentioned he had some suspicions from the preliminary backgrounds we did. I wanted to have him compare the final and see if there was any validity to his concerns.”

If Q ever has an inclination about something, ninety-nine percent of the time it’s spot-on. “Yeah, I talked to him this morning, and he knows it’ll be in the database soon.”

“Thanks. Why don’t you head out after you get that sent off?”

I wait for him to stand, and when he looks down, my brows snap together. “I’m a grown-ass man, Royce. Don’t need you tellin’ me when I can go home for the day.” Even though he’s technically my boss.

“I thought—”

“You thought ’cause I got a woman on my mind you’d play dumb-ass games with me, and that is not happening.”

He shakes his head. “I’ve known you a while, D. Whatever’s on your mind with this chick isn’t just you thinking about her. I can tell it’s more, but I get it.” He laughs, and it reminds me that he really does know how I feel, wanting someone you can’t have. “I won’t bring it up again, but I’m just gonna say—”

“Don’t.”

“She’s not her.”

I clamp my jaw shut and grind my teeth, watching him fade away as he disappears down the hallway along with his words. He’s right. She’s not her; she’s better. More. She’s everything, and I don’t even know her last name. Hell, I don’t even want to know what it is because the only one I want her to have is mine. Shit. I need to see her. Waking up my computer, I finish what I need to do as fast as possible and then get out of here. Only because I want to, not because I was told to.

I park on the same street the vet is on, far enough away that Izzy won’t notice me but close enough that I can see her. It’s something I know I shouldn’t do, but I can’t help it. If it wasn’t for the fact that I’m a bodyguard and my job is to observe, I’d question whether knowing her schedule was stalker-ish, but I am perceptive, so it wasn’t hard to figure out. I guess that’s something else I can add to the list of things I know about her.

I unclip my seat belt and lean back, waiting for her to walk out of the building. And at 3:07,