Page 7 of Guarded By the Lumberjack
"You need a bodyguard."
I lay the printed messages on the table, stating what seems obvious to me.
"I need this to stop." Penny leans forward, one hand remaining on her mug of tea, but the other she stretches across toward me.
God help me. I take her hand.
And right then and there, I know I'll die to keep this woman safe.
But not out of obligation to the man who served under my command.
Chapter Four
Penny
Forty-eight hours under Calvin's watch has me feeling safe again. Safe enough to sit on the wide deck that runs the length of the home's ground floor, even while Calvin stays inside working from his home office.
He refuses to be far from me.
He called in someone else to handle his work with the timber business. It's me that's keeping him in front of his computers here, trying to trace emails and phone records to narrow down the identity and location of the person who's been harassing me.
I had no idea he could do that without my phone, but it turns out thatCaptainClavin James Murdock-- he filled me in on the finer points of his military career after my late husband would have known him-- isn't just a former SEAL commander, he has some sort of special talent for exactly this kind of thing; logistics, orienteering, tracing electronically transmitted information.
Calvin's a badass. And that only makes him hotter. And hotter is not what I need my self-appointed personal security detail to be.
The phone in my hand pings with an incoming message. Which startles me out of my sudoku app because no one has the number except Cal. He bought me a new phone and set it up sothat I can check on my accounts without leaving a data trail that reveals my current location. But the only person who should be able to contact me directly on this device is Cal himself.
The number is unknown.
The message has me running inside to find Calvin.
He's right where I left him, sitting in a large room on the second floor where floor to ceiling windows face the granite mountain that the house clings to.
He told me he doesn't love closed-in spaces-- something about diving that didn't sound like it was something he did for fun.
The desk in here runs the length of the room and wraps around in a U shape. Monitors stretch across the wall. Everything from fidget spinners to a set of nail clippers and several empty coffee cups fill in the spaces around keyboards, mice, and trackpads.
Calvin is leaning back in a chair that looks like it belongs on a space ship. Those long legs of his stretched out under the desk, one hand resting on a large track pad, the other on the arm of the chair, fingers drumming against the padded armrest in a strong, steady cadence that indicates he's lost in whatever it is he's working on.
I quickly got used to his hyper-focused glare, the way he gets completely absorbed in anything he's seriously interested in.
When we're downstairs sharing a meal, or sitting on the deck sharing conversation-- it's me that's fixed in his singularly attentive gaze.
It's only made me more aware of how isolated I've really been from meaningful human contact.
Sure, I have my online community and they've been instrumental in helping me get through the hardest part of my life. I have my parents, but they live far away now, having movedto be closer to my sister-- who gave them the grandchildren that Tyler and I never had a chance to.
Tyler's family and I didn't stay close. They said the right things in the beginning, but once I started coming out of the darkness, it became clear they didn't really want to see me thrive without their son.
Since this drama ramped up, my friends haven't been the most reliable. Concerned, sure, but because they think I'm having some sort of psychological event driving me to make up trouble for attention. Not because they believe me.
Cal believes me though. He listens intently when I speak. He takes care of me with a gentle nature that's so incongruous to the hardened military man that's stepped up to protect me without question.
Standing at the door of his office, I pause a moment to look at him.
With his muscled physique, rugged masculinity, and protective demeanor, it's hard not to notice that Calvin Murdock is all man.
And that makes it impossible not to remember that I'm a woman.
