I Just Need You - J. Nathan Page 0,12
needed him.
CHAPTER FIVE
Tristan
It was two in the morning, and I should’ve been asleep. But instead, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling of the damn dorm room trying to figure out how I was going to get through this fucking assignment unscathed. Because I was pretty damn sure it was gonna be the death of me.
I’d started Elite Security at eighteen. Marco came on as my partner right from the start running everything for me. He’d been Special Forces and taught me everything he knew. My plan had never been to just own the company. I knew since the age of nine that I wanted to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. And, after seven years in business, it’s what I was doing.
We currently employed twenty (both in the field and working cyber security), but Marco wanted us to grow even bigger, opening up branches across the country. And, the only time we’d ever come to heads over something was this assignment. I knew better than to take on a young client who’d traipsed across the globe for college when she knew there could be threats against her. But Marco had stood behind his decision, arguing it was important for our expansion plans to take on high-profile clients. And it was him who promised the Hastings that he and I would personally handle their daughter’s protection.
Fuck me.
I knew it would be bad, but nothing could prepare me for being at a college and protecting a rich girl who didn’t give a shit about her own life. I’d called it from jump. Our typical clients hired us because they cared about their own safety. But this one? This one thought life as she knew it could go back to normal—back to how it had been before the botched kidnapping. Well, I had news for Miss Over-Privileged. If she expected me to do my job right, she needed to do what I said.
A door opened in the hallway. Students were constantly in and out of each other’s rooms, but being late, I needed to check the live camera feeds on my monitor.
I slipped out of bed and grabbed my gun from the desk beside me. I moved to the monitor and checked the hallway feed. Kresley tiptoed down the hallway in her pajamas. God dammit. I moved to the door and threw it wide open. “What the fuck?”
She stopped short, turning slowly to face me. “I just needed the bathroom.”
“You need to call us.”
Her eyes dropped to the gun at my side and her teeth ground together. “I didn’t want to bother you.”
“Ironic.”
She pointed at me, her index finger tapping in the air as if to poke me as hard as she could with it. “That right there is why I didn’t want to call you. I didn’t want to see the condescension on your face.” Then, as if exhaustion had taken over her, she dropped her hand and a sigh of resignation left her. “I am trying to coexist here, but you are making it impossible.”
“You keep doing careless shit,” I countered, keeping my eyes on hers and not on the tiny tank top and shorts she apparently wore to bed.
“You really think someone is waiting in the bathroom for me?”
“No.”
Her brows squished together. “Then what’s the problem?”
“The problem is we have protocols in place for a reason.”
She closed her eyes and exhaled, gesturing her hand toward the bathroom. “Go ahead.”
I walked to the bathroom, pushing open the door and checking for feet under the stalls. When I saw none, I pushed open every stall door to make sure no one hid on the toilets. Then, I stepped back out into the hallway and leaned against the wall. “All clear.”
Kresley walked inside.
The sweet scent of lavender body lotion wafted by me, and I couldn’t help but breathe in the girlish scent. I wondered if she wore it to bed to make her sleepy since lavender had that effect. I wasn’t too proud to admit I’d tried it before. Didn’t work, but it was worth a shot.
The toilet flushed, and I heard the sink switch on then off. The bathroom door opened and Kresley walked out without looking at me.
“Should I expect a call in the middle of the night every night?” I asked as I followed her down the hallway.
“I don’t sleep,” she said, not bothering to look at me. “So probably.” She stepped into her room and closed the door.
And, as I was left standing alone in the middle