Page 40 of The Bodyguard
9
GARRETT
Pine’s Ranch
Shit. What the fuck just happened? I tried to think. She’d been late, which made me crazy. She wore cowboy boots and made me chocolate chip cookies, which also made me crazy. I’d come down on her like a ton of bricks for being too damn hard on herself. And she’d fired back with the one weapon she had.
It was a good one, too. Because the whole time during my engagement, she had known what Betty was. A cheater. She’d told me to my face, expecting me to believe her and I hadn’t. She must have laughed her ass off when she heard what Betty did to me at the church.
I stopped then and ran a hand through my hair. No, she wouldn’t have laughed. She would have felt bad for me. Sad, even.
She’s not good enough for you.
That’s what Brin had always told me about the women in my life. It sort of sucked to know she was right. I looked around my empty home and thought of the things I was missing.
I’d thought I would have long been married by now, maybe already had a couple of kids. It’s what Betty had told me she wanted. And she had, she just hadn’t wanted those things with me.
So, fine, I gave up on all that crap. Who needed it?
Then why were you freaking out that Brin was fifteen minutes late?
Shit.
Because I’d been anxious to see her. Anxious to cook for her and just talk with her. Staring at the clock, wondering if she had changed her mind, twisted my guts up. I didn’t want this woman to change her mind about me.
Maybe that was my problem. I had lived in the world for a long time, confident that Sabrina King of The Kings had a crush on me. I wanted that back. The idea of knowing someone in my life would put me first, above anyone else.
It was nice. It also made me a raging asshole.
I needed to apologize. I looked around for my keys and found them on the table by the front door. I jogged out to my truck, trying to think of what the hell was I going to say.
I was still running through it when I pulled up to her gate. Damn, the gate. I didn’t want to buzz her and give her the chance to tell me to go away. Instead, I left the truck at the bottom of the drive and hopped the low fence onto the property. The gate kept unwanted vehicles out, but that was about it.
I marched up the driveway and got to her front door. I pounded on it because it felt good. Loud and hard, and as upset as I was it gave me a little relief.
Except I heard a scream, a loud scared one from inside the house. Damn it. “Sabrina!” I shouted. “Sabrina! Answer me.”
I reached for the knob and jerked on it, but there was no way I was getting past the large wooden door.
But I knew from experience the back kitchen door off the sunporch was pretty flimsy. I jogged around the expansive mansion until I saw the kitchen door. The lock on this door was just a latch hook that I bulled my way through. Once inside, I started running through the house. That scream. That hadn’t been about anger or outrage.
It had been about fear.
“Sabrina! Where the hell are you?”
Turning the corner out of the hallway, making my toward the living room, I saw her sitting on the floor with her back to the wall. There was a gun in her hand but she wasn’t aiming it. She was crying.
No. Sobbing.
Cautiously, because a sobbing woman with a gun in her hand was not something to take lightly, I approached her. “Brin,” I said softly.
Her body jerked but she still didn’t look at me.
I crouched down beside her and took the gun out of her hand. “Brin, talk to me.”
She shook her head.
“Where are Ronnie and Bea? Hell, where is Trudy?”
