and kiss her cheek, but recognized it and shoved it away before he did something so senseless. “You’re okay.”
“I know.” She closed the door.
Alex listened to hear the locks engage and the alarm reset. Then he alerted the outside team that he was checking out, and finally was on his own.
~oOo~
It was late, past midnight, and he had Lia again in the morning, so he just headed straight to the apartment. The Paganos Brothers kept a townhouse apartment in a middle-class area at the edge of Providence. It had been used for all sorts of shit that Alex had heard tell of, but right now, it was home base for Lia’s detail. Just a bro pad.
Bluto was up, sitting on the sofa in his underwear, playing World of Warcraft on his laptop. He had a headset on and was slamming his finger down on the elaborate mouse resting on the arm of the sofa.
Bluto’s actual name was David, but he came by the nickname honestly—he was built like John Belushi and had about as much class as his Animal House namesake.
“Move, noob! Fucking MOVE!” he yelled into his mic.
Fucking geek. He, too, blended in on the Brown campus. In a totally different way.
Getting no notice from his roommate, Alex strolled through the living room to the kitchen and got himself a beer. There was a new pizza box in there as well, so he pulled it out and checked—fuck. Pineapple. He swore Bluto did that so he didn’t have to share.
He shoved the box back in and snagged the last carton of beef chow mein from a few days back. He plucked one of the fifty or so wrapped packages of chopsticks from the drawer beside the fridge, tore it open, and broke them apart.
Leaning against the counter, Alex shoved cold noodles in his mouth and stared at the floor, thinking back on the night.
The truth was, he liked Lia. A lot, actually. If she was anybody else in the world, he would have asked her out long before now. She was pretty and sweet, and he’d spent enough time with her as her guard that he knew a lot about her. The kinds of things maybe even her family didn’t know. He saw her in her private moments, the way she was after she turned away from a conversation or ended a phone call, whatever.
Lia’s primary, visible personality was bright and a little bubbly. She liked people to like her, and she wanted to like other people. You had to work to get on her bad side. But under all that, she was really insecure and a little sad. In the moments when Alex—him alone—saw that, he felt a strong pull to her. Like tonight, when he’d almost kissed her cheek.
Obviously, that would have been completely, entirely, ridiculously insane. He was her bodyguard. His job was to lurk, to stand back, to watch her live her life, not to be in it. And she was the daughter of Nick Fucking Pagano, whose bad side was a very, very bad place to be.
As Biff Billionaire was no doubt learning even now.
Alex did not need, nor did he want, that kind of heat. He’d had a taste once, and he meant never to do anything that would put him in that place again.
He just wanted Lia to find something, or somebody, who made her happy, so he didn’t see that sad little girl behind her bright green eyes.
~ 2 ~
Lia dug her way out from under the covers and reached for her relentless phone. As she opened her eyes, she noted that the light was watery and faint—it was crazy early on a Saturday morning for Harriet to be calling her.
Unless something bad had happened to her. Maybe Harriet hadn’t been so willing last night, after all. Maybe somebody had dosed her like Jackson Crenville had meant to do to Lia.
“Hey, Harrie. You okay?” she answered.
“Oh. My. GOD, Leah!” Everybody at Brown knew her as Leah Maddox because her father wanted her protected in every way he could imagine, shielded even from his name, so she made herself hear the different spelling of her real first name. It helped her remember to spell it that way herself. “Did you know about this?”
“Did I know about what? Did you get hurt last night? Are you okay?”
Lia had been irritated when Harriet and Kayla both ditched her for guys within the first half-hour last night. She hadn’t even really wanted to go to