Page 2 of Her Bossy Bodyguards

“Hey, I’m twenty-one!” I scoffed. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business, anyway. Wait! Are you talking to my dad? Is that my dad? Let me talk to him.”

“You can talk to him once we get you to a safe location.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.” I held up my palm. “Thanks, but no thanks. For all I know, you’re the one trying to kill me.”

“Yeah, how do we know you’re not just some weirdo off the street?” Kelly added.

“I’m with Bolin and Trapper, Ms. Hanson,” the stranger answered. “Your father hired us to keep you safe.”

“…Bolin and Trapper?” I shrugged, unfamiliar with the name. “I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about—”

“Natalie!” Kelly cried out, the shot glass by her hand seeming to explode on the spot.

What the hell?

Since when did shot glasses spontaneously combust?

“We have to move!” The stranger pulled me out of my seat at the bar, his arm soon pushing my head underneath it as he forced me toward the nearest exit. “Move! Move! Move!”

“What the fuck?”I slammed the SUV door shut behind me as I stepped out of the black car. “Was that a fucking bullet or something? Was someone seriously trying to kill me back at the bar?”

“You can discuss the particulars with Bolin and Trapper, Ms. Hanson.” The stranger’s words were calm as he walked toward an unfamiliar apartment complex. The guy had barely said anything to me on the car ride over, keeping his focus on the road as he drove us through the night.

And it looked like I wasn’t going to get anything out of him now, either, maintaining his silence as he stepped through the apartment’s doorway.

I followed right behind him, glancing around the dark hallway, searching for any sign of my dad.

“I knew it. I fucking knew it,” I murmured, my eyes still filtering through the dark. “I knew that something was going to go wrong today. I could just feel it in my stomach—”

“That’s a holdover from when we were living in the jungles,” an unfamiliar, deep male voice responded to my thought as footsteps echoed down the hall. “It’s what kept you from getting eaten by a lion. Or a hippo. Or whatever used to eat us before we figured out how to build houses.”

The footsteps stopped a few inches away from me, as the voice’s source suddenly came into full view.

Holy fuck.

I was looking at the hottest guy that I’d ever seen in my life. He was at least six feet tall, and it was obvious that he took good care of his body, too, the muscles in his arms nearly bulging right out of his black T-shirt. And as he used a hand to casually brush through his short, blond hair, I watched as his shirt rose up just enough to reveal the bottom row of his six-pack, hidden behind the fabric.

Eventually, even though it felt impossibly difficult, I looked away from his perfect body and back up at his face, elated to see that his features were hard yet still so youthful. I tried to do the math in my head, guessing at his age, wondering if he would’ve thought that I was too young to make out with, too young to try and take home at night.

“Sorry about the bar pick-up,” the hot stranger said. “Kingston or I would’ve come to get you, but we had to pick up your father first.”

He then held out his hand for mine, a smile spreading across his face. “My name’s Zeke. Zeke Trapper.”

“That…sounds like the name of a kidnapper,” I admitted as I shook his hand.

And Zeke let out a loud laugh. “It’s quite the opposite, little lady. They call me topreventkidnappings.”

“Is that what was going on tonight?” I asked, nervously pulling my hand away from Zeke’s own, not wanting him to notice the effect he was having on me. “Someone was trying to kidnap me?”

“All intel says yes,” Zeke replied. “But there’s always a small chance that it could turn into something more.”

“Like an attempt on my life?” My words were shaky as I guessed.

“You can never be too careful,” Zeke answered. “But the good news is that whatever bullets they sent flying at Lincoln’s, it’s obvious that they weren’t trying to kill you. In fact, my experience with these kinds of lowlifes tells me that they were just trying to send a message.”

“And what message would that be?”

“That your dad really needs to watch his back.”

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