Page 27 of The Bodyguard
GARRETT
The Bar
This had been a mistake. I sat there sipping my beer, staring at the door like some puppy waiting for his master to come home, and realized I hadn’t been honest with myself this morning.
I’d told myself I just wanted to find out whatever trouble Brin was having in LA.
That I still saw her as the girl I knew growing up.
That I hadn’t been affected by the sight of her in shorts and a tank top with sweat dripping down her tanned, toned body.
Now my foot was tapping on the floor as the minute hand passed ten after six.
Ten minutes wasn’t late. Ten minutes was in the window of normal.
Except when you had been a man who’d stood in the front of a church waiting for his bride to walk down the aisle.
Then ten minutes became ten years.
I was about to get up and leave. Maybe drive out to her place directly to tell her that standing me up had been a shitty thing to do. If she wanted to prove she’d matured, then this spiteful little stunt hadn’t accomplished that.
The door to the bar opened and she walked in. She was wearing jeans, a pink silk shirt, and shoes so high I had no idea how she walked in them. But they made her legs look that much longer.
She sat across from me in the booth I had picked.
“Sorry I’m late. I couldn’t find a parking spot on the street that was close. This place must be more popular than I remember.”
Immediately all the tension I had been feeling left me. I had to unclench my hands from around my beer glass and stop my foot from bouncing. Remind myself that it was perfectly reasonable to be a few minutes late to a dinner meeting, not a date, because of parking.
“I told you—the food is decent.”
Grace, who was a high school senior and worked the night shift, came over to take our order.
“I’ll have a white wine,” Brin told her.
“And two cheeseburgers with everything on them,” I said.
“Actually, I’ll just have a side salad.” Brin smiled at the girl.
“What’s the matter, you don’t eat meat?” I asked.
She looked at me like I was insane. “Hello, I am a Texan. Of course I eat meat. I just can’t eat cheeseburgers with everything on them.”
“You need to eat a cheeseburger. Grace, bring us the burgers with her salad. We’ll see if I can talk her into it.”
“Yes, sheriff.”
Brin waited until Grace left and then glared at me. “You keep telling me to eat cheeseburgers. If you have a point to make, why don’t you just make it?”
“You’re too thin. There, I said it.” And immediately I realized I had no right to say anything about her body. But I had seen her in the shorts and tank top, and while she was super hot she still looked frail to me. Unprotected. Vulnerable.
“I am not! I’m TV thin and you’re just not used to seeing that in the real world. Trust me, go to LA. You’ll see it everywhere.”
“TV thin,” I snorted. “Translated—you don’t eat enough to keep a rabbit alive. You need some substance in you. Something besides champagne.”
She huffed. “See, there you go again. Making assumptions about me.”
“How is that an assumption when I see you on TV?”
