Page 17 of The Bodyguard

Her eyebrow arched.

“Shouldn’t it read something like, ‘What’s your ETA, babe?’”

A smile crept onto her face.

“Babe,” Sawyer teased.

“I don’t even know when he started calling me that.” Angela elbowed him. “It’s not like he thinks I’m a babe.”

Sawyer gestured to the phone. “Obviously, he does.”

She rolled her eyes. “Maybe he means it like Babe Ruth? Did they call him in during the clutch or something?”

He laughed. “What, like you’re a pinch-hitting girlfriend?”

Angela’s eyes widened. “Oh my God, I am.” She tipped her head back. “That makes so much sense.”

“No, it doesn’t. You’re nuts. That’s what you are,babe.”

Laughter was the best medicine. Everything was wrong with her world, but at least Sawyer could make her smile. Angela stood and pulled his arm. “Come on. If I’m going into the lion’s den, so are you.”

CHAPTER FIVE

The war-room door was a simple conference-room door. Angela had bustled in and out of it a hundred times without thinking. She wasn’t a team leader and had never gone into the field for military operations, but this conference room was her domain. However, now she was stuck outside of it, high heels cemented to the carpet.

A headache that she didn’t want to confront waited on the other side of the door. Sawyer patiently waited behind her. She wasn’t sure she could walk in if he weren’t her backup.

Then again, Jared wouldn’t let anything happen to her. She’d always done a good job as an administrator for the ACES team. Her position went beyond the secretarial role he’d probably envisioned—a job only offered to her out of pity. But she’d surpassed everyone’s expectations, including her own.

Angela handled the normal ho-hum business of paperwork but also scheduled private jets, coordinated safe houses, and arranged for aliases. She shopped for supplies for undercover assignments and managed an assembly of clandestine players and surreptitious clients.

She loved her job.

She was good at it.

But she was never the topic of conversation. That would change when she walked into the war room.

There were three roles Angela could play: Jared Westin’s assistant, Senator Sorenson’s daughter, and Paul Bane’s girlfriend. Each one had expectations heavy enough to drown a whale.

“Don’t let ’em scare you,” Sawyer said under his breath, tacking on, “Babe.”

The corners of her mouth quirked. “Funny, I don’t want to throat-punch you when you say that.”

“It’s all about the delivery.” He turned her around and squeezed her shoulder. “You got this, Ange.” Then Sawyer stepped back for her to make an entrance. “Head up. Shoulders back.You’ve got this.”

Her hotter-than-the-Sahara bodyguard was giving her a pep talk to face her in-name-only boyfriend. Nothing weird about that…

She glanced over her shoulder. Sawyer winked. Her stomach and confidence jumped. That was what she needed. Her head was up. Shoulders back. Angela channeled the person Sawyer believed she was and grinned. “Here goes nothing.”

She opened the door and paused to take in the players.

If Angela considered the total length of time she had known each of them, her mother had the most claim to her, but Angela wasn’t often her mother’s top priority. Their relationship was practical, though not without their version of love.

Paul had been in Angela’s life since she was a hospitality major in college. They’d met when he’d interned in her mother’s senate office. He had remained committed to Angela throughout her ordeal with Pham, apparently never losing hope that she’d be found someday. She was. He seemed glad. Their relationship had never been a torrid love affair, but did those things really exist?

How did Jared see Angela? He had the slightest claim on her yet the strongest gravitational pull in the war room. He and his Abu Dhabi-based team had her loyalty. They’d rescued her from Pham. Boss Man provided her with a job in a secure location and the ability to control the minutiae around her. But she never forgot that she hadn’t earned the position in Titan. Someone gave it to her because of her last name.

Jared sat at the head of the table. Her mother and Paul sat on one side. Rich and Rob, the campaign manager and politicalconsultant, sat on the other. The imposing table had never seemed to unnerve Angela before now.

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