Page 2 of Buy Me, Love
Kit Kensington is utter perfection and the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on: long blonde hair, big, bright blue eyes, and a heart of pure gold. And at any chance she gets, she will dart into a subway station, jump the turnstile and have to be picked up by her guards at the next station. She’ll open up her wallet to any beggar with a cup full of nickels and she won’t even try to hide the hundred-dollar bills stuffedinside.
She’s overprotected, so she just doesn’t get the way the world works. It’s preserved her kindness, but it’s also made hervulnerable.
As if her physical appearance didn’t already do that on itsown.
I follow her sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. A man does have to sleep, otherwise I’d be on her all day, every day, and all night. She doesn’t know I exist, and that’s the only way I’ve been able to keep an eye on her. Her primary security, she knows who they are, so she knows who to evade. I remain in the shadows, and I’m always watchingher.
I met her father when we were both in the Army. The kind of bond that grabs hold in that kind of situation is one that can’t be broken. It’s one that can’t get any stronger, either, or that’s what Ithought.
Our squad was doing a sweep of a house where we had intel on a person of interest hiding. When we walked through the door, there were only two kids and a woman there, huddled on a mattress in the corner. Then I spotted a shadow moving, then racing into my periphery and up a flight of stairs. Everything happened in slow motion. I didn’t have time to think. I only had time toreact.
Kit’s father raced toward the stairs after him. Then I heard the spray of bullets. I shielded the kids, crying and trembling, from the onslaught. Her father ricocheted down the stairs and landed with a thud I’ll remember for the rest of my life. He’d been shot in theshoulder.
Then another spray of gunfire assaulted us from behind me. I ducked and handed the kids off to another guy in our squad. For everything happening so slowly, it was over before I knew it. The next thing I remember is dragging Kit’s father out of that house, unconscious, under plumes of black smoke and handing him off to a medic. I turned around to look back at the house, and that’s when the explosion happened. I can still hear the ringing in myears.
After the Army, our paths diverged. He moved back to New York and took up the helm of his parents’ business, which by then was becoming one of the most successful hotels in New York. I moved to Arizona where my parents had a parcel of land, built a house for myself, and opened a private security firm. I hired veterans, made buckets-full of money, and was able to actually do some good in this world while making bank at the sametime.
After a while, I became restless. The dry, arid nights all started to slam up against each other, and it felt like one big string of days that turned into months and then years. I hired a broker to find me a tenant, had my four-bedroom house leased up for two years within a week, and zipped up my only suitcase and headed out to Brooklyn, where I wasborn.
Kit’s old man approached me two weeks after I’d reached out to let him know I was in NewYork.
“I can’t get her to stay still,” he’d said, sinking into the chair across my desk in my Brooklyn office. I grabbed him a cup of coffee from the small pot in the corner and he took it gratefully. “She has her own security detail, but she keeps trying to get away from them. I need someone to keep an eye on her, someone she doesn’t know is followingher.
“So she won’t know who to run away from.” I nodded. It was a little out of the ordinary, but it madesense.
He’d slid me a photo of her and I picked it up with curious fingers, studied it. She was pretty. Reallypretty.
So the man is protective, and why shouldn’t he be? It’s standard for people with this much money to be surrounded by guards and have security on their family members, too. He’d already had a close call with his own life, so why the hell shouldn’t he want to protect the only person in the world who mattered to him? His wife had passed away when Kit was only a baby, so she really was all hehad.
But Kit wasn’t disobedient - just a little starved forindependence.
I told him with a handshake that I’d be happy to take on the job, and before the ink was dry on the contract, her picture was folded up and put into my wallet. Her father bought all of my time. I’d be on-call twenty-four seven. He even gave me a suite in his hotel so I would always benearby.
My life was simpler before thatmeeting.
A round of applause pulls me back to the moment. The auction is about to start, so I head to the next room with the rest of the ticket-holders. I hold my scotch a little firmer when we walk through the doors, anticipation running through me like a microscopic ticking fucking timebomb.
“She looks like the kind of girl who wants to be called bad,” a round-faced young man near me says. He still has baby fat and all. I don’t like his comment, but I tuck a growl into my chest and head to a seat near the back of theballroom.
I don’t understand why she’s doing this. This isn’t like her. I’ve never seen her on a date. When her father’s assistant informed me of this event I realized that I’m the kind of man who can get close to losing his cool, nearly crushing my phone to pieces in frustration when I’d learned thenews.
God please help me get through this evening. I take a sip of my scotch and try to let the burn distract me. I don’t know how I’m going to handle watching her on a date with some other man, even if he paid forit.
Hell,especiallyif he paid forit.
“It’s starting,” the guy behind me says lasciviously. A hush settles over the crowd. Lights from two corners of the room climb up the billionaire’s daughter and Ms. Steele starts tospeak.
“Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Kensington Hotel’s tenth annual Valentine’s Day Auction. Past auctions have included chef-table reservations at some of New York’s most favored restaurants, private yacht tours around Manhattan Island, and fabulous resort weekends. This year we have many valuable experiences up for auction, and first of them is a date with KitKensington!”
Around me, polite chatter and applause bubble over the crowd. I grab the auction catalogue from my suit pocket and flip to the page with her face and picture on it, my thumb brushing the corner of the paper. I want to tear it to pieces, I want to steal every last copy, I want to burn them all in a trash can in City Hall Park so everyone knows that Kit Kensington is for my eyes and my eyesonly.
“Kit Kensington is currently a part-time marketing consultant for the Kensington Hotel and attends Columbia University. She is five-feet, five-inches in heels, and weighs…well, that’s her business. Kit is the loving daughter of the head of the Kensingtonfamily.”
A tick in my jaw sets my eyes onhers.
This is sick. She might as well be up there in a string bikini with her fingers crawling up the back of her scalp, eyes closed and lips parted for how the men in this room are looking ather.
“Kit Kensington,” Ms. Steele continues, “enjoys stargazing, constellation-hunting, reading, cooking, and baking. Her favorite recipes are Engagement Chicken and LemonBars.”
