Page 27 of Home Coming

“This is upstate New York. It’s not like I can call and have paid security over here in an hour.” He paused barely a second before he continued, “But I can do it.”

“Perfect,” Xander said.

“What?” Bailey asked over him.

“I’ll drive her to the city for the recording session. I’ve got some experience with close personal protection.”

“Somehow I thought you might.” Xander’s grin wasn’t quite villainous, but it was close. He did like when he got his way.

Ignoring Xander, Quinn focused on Bailey. “My rental’s big enough we should be able to move a lot of your stuff out of that apartment while we’re there.”

“Move it to where? I don’t have another place yet,” she said as the situation spun out of her control.

“Here,” he said as Josie squealed out ayayloud enough Bailey had no problem hearing it over her thundering pulse.

CHAPTERTEN

Gone was every bit of suspicion he’d had about why Bailey had suddenly reappeared in his sister’s life.

He understood now. Her world had been turned upside down.

She’d been targeted by an intruder in her own apartment. That had to be frightening for her.

Changing location had been smart. A good start, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

After witnessing the video call conversation Quinn could see the man who must be her manager pretty much ran her life. But after the break in, that was a good thing.

When Bailey probably would have stayed there, scared and unsafe, Xander had told her to get out of the apartment and Bailey had actually done it. Left her home even though she had no plans of where else to go.

And thanks to that song, Quinn knew she’d been cheated on.

Whoever the asshole ex-boyfriend was, he’d been the one person she should have been able to trust, to count on, to turn to at a time like this, but she no longer could.

The protector in Quinn wanted to wrap her up and keep her safe. The one problem was, he wasn’t sure if it was Jane, his little sister’s bestie from a decade ago, he was protecting, or Bailey, the hottie he couldn’t stop thinking about naked.

But he’d had plenty of time to think about it today while sitting next to her during the mostly silent car ride. Three hours in fact, the time it would take to drive to the studio Xander had booked.

She sat in the passenger seat, quiet unless she was answering, with the shortest sentences possible, his questions about the radio station or if she wanted him to pull off at the rest stop.

“Are you warm enough?” he asked, trying to keep the lines of communication open since he could see she wasn’t happy.

Whether that unhappiness was because of the cheating ex, the spur of the moment recording session, or Quinn’s new role as bodyguard he wasn’t sure. Maybe a combination of everything.

She’d been staring out the side window and startled at his question. She glanced over to say, “I’m fine.”

Two words rather than one. A plethora of riches.

He chewed on his lip as he nodded, then said, “Good.”

She went back to her silent contemplation, but not for long. After a deep inhale and exhale she picked up her phone, something she’d done a good dozen times in the past hour.

He hadn’t bothered to tell her that cell signal was spotty at best. He and his family had done this drive countless times. Every year to see the Christmas decorations in the city.

From the time he and Josie had gotten cell phones, car games took a backseat to their obsession with finding signal on the long road trip.

Quinn happened to know they were entering a green zone—what Josie had dubbed the area of rare strong cell service.

Bailey discovered the signal. He knew when she let out a little gasp, just before her fingers started flying over the screen.

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