Page 3 of The Bodyguard Affair
I expect him to do us both a solid and leave, but he lingers. “It won’t happen again,” he assures me with a dip of his chin.
“You won’t walk in on an unsuspecting stranger in the bathroom again?” I clarify, my gaze stuck somewhere around his full, soft-looking lips. I can barely look at him without my cheeks heating, wondering if he’s secretly judging me about my lazy grooming.
“Never. I’m gonna peek under the stall first to make sure it’sunoccupied.” He stops and winces. “Actually, never mind. Peeking under the stall…that’s equally creepy, isn’t it?”
“Yup. Sex predators tend to do that kind of thing.”
“I swear I’m not a sexual predator. Or a predator of any sort. God, I can’t believe I just said that. I feel horrible about the whole thing.” I can tell he’s genuine, based on the furrow of his thick brows, the downturn of his shoulders.
“Don’t. It wasn’t your fault. The lock was broken. It’s all good,” I say, sitting up a little straighter.
I’m not convincing enough, because he’s still rooted in place, hands twisted in front of his torso. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. I fully accept your apology.” I meet his eyes reluctantly.
“Okay. Well…have a good night?” He cheerfully pats the top of our booth before backing away, one side of his mouth quirking into a lopsided smile that sends a single spark ping-ponging down my spine.
“Have a good—bye.” I slow-wave, watching him turn away into the crowd. He rakes his hand through his waves and strides back to the bar, plunking down beside another guy in a backward ball cap who’s also scarily fit, tattoos decorating both arms.
Laine gives me another slap on the thigh, though this one is with purpose. “Um, are you ill?”
“What?”
She shoots me a hard stare from under her thick lashes. “Bathroom guy. He’s…hot. Weirdly hot. Like, does-not-belong-in-Ottawa hot. I wonder if he’s a Sens player or something. He kinda has that hockey guy swagger. And the shaggy hair. Minus the wet dog smell.”
I don’t recognize him, not that I’m familiar with the Sensroster. As someone with weak ankles and zero bodily coordination, I don’t exactly follow sports. “So?”
“So! He was flirting and you let him walk away. You don’t let guys like that walk away,” she says, apparently under the delusion that I’ve sent the love of my life away into the mist, never to be seen again.
“He just came over to apologize,” I assure her. He smiled at me a fair bit, but I assumed those were sorry-I-accidentally-saw-your-pubes smiles. Like the way I smile weakly at panhandlers outside my apartment.
Laine emits a disgruntled sigh and levels me with a look that screams,Come the fuck on. “He was interested. He’s still looking at you. Right now!”
I brave a look, confident she’s lying to boost my morale.
Shit.
She is not.
Our eyes meet again and he grins, revealing dimples.Dimples. The kind I write about. Sweet Christ. I swiftly look away, back to the relative safety of Laine.
“A few days ago, you were lecturing me about staying single and focusing on my career,” I remind her. Laine isn’t normally one to push romantic relationships. She swears by being a singleton and doesn’t plan on marrying, ever—hence her condemnation of romance novels.
“And I stand by that,” she says, pausing to finish her gin and tonic. “But there’s no harm in a one-night stand with some random you’ll never see again, especially if it helps get you out of your funk. I mean, look at him. He just looks like he knows his way around down there.”
“I’m not in afunk. I just got a new job,” I point out.
For some reason, Laine is concerned that I’m not over the breakup. Maybe she’s right. Hunter and I were only dating a year, but it felt like longer, especially after we moved in together so soon.
On our first day of work, he’d sent me a DM on our internal messaging system that read,Coffee?He was as consistent with the messages as he was with his sweater-vest collection. We’d trade jokes about our boss and her tendency to send frantic emails without subject lines or punctuation, or worse, entire emailswithinthe subject line.
He was passionate, realistic, and analytical about everything, never saying things he didn’t mean. Whenever he wanted to make a purchase, like a new pair of dress shoes, he’d spend hours and hours researching. He came from a prominent family in the city with a long history in politics. Something about him just oozed reliability—something I’d never had before. And so I let myself trust him. I let myself fall. Fast.
Everything was perfect, until the lead-up to the election. Hunter was tasked with coming up with social media slogans and captions for the campaign. He was overwhelmed with other work, so I stepped in to help, coming up with three. One of them was actually used in the PM’s victory speech the night of the election: “There’s no us versus them. Only us.”
I never expected him to credit me after the fact, but he never acknowledged my role in helping him, even privately. It was like he actually convinced himself he wrote it. He started talking over me in meetings or, worse, correcting me in front of our boss. Things like this happened more and more toward the end of our internship when it became clear there would be only onejob opening on the media and communications team, a role both of us wanted.
One night in bed, he’d rolled over and said, “You do realize only one of us can get the job, right?”
