Excerpt from "Every Breath You Take" by Hope Tarr

Excerpted from Chapter 6

He’d called her Lex.

That had been his first mistake. His second had been to linger on the sofa in their suite’s living room once they got back to the hotel. Instead, he should have excused himself and gone to bed. Except that a bodyguard couldn’t retire and leave his principal still up and about. Seated on the cushion beside him, Alex was obviously too wired for sleep.

She shifted to face him. The jubilant smile she’d apparently been working at holding back broke over her face. “Three guesses at who scored an eight AM breakfast meeting with the Prime Minister at his private residence tomorrow morning?”

He’d seen her talking to him not long after the run in with Collins. Cole couldn’t be happier for her or prouder. “That’s great. Congratulations.” He reached out to give her a high five.

She turned to him, palm-up, and their hands met in a soft slap, her much smaller hand still the perfect mate to his. Taking it back, she admitted, “Now that the adrenalin rush is over, what I mostly am is hungry.”

The Brits had set out quite a spread. Early in the evening he’d seen her fill a plate from one of the buffet tables but, come to think of it, he’d never actually seen the food make it into her mouth.

“You didn’t get anything to eat?” Neither had he but that was beside the point.

She pulled out the pearl-studded hair clasp and combed her hand through her pale hair, the same phantom fingers he still sometimes woke up from dreams feeling raking down his back. “I had butterflies in my stomach the whole time. Scratch the butterflies, it felt more like bats. Wanna bet room service has signed off for the night?”

Given that it was after ten, and Belmopan more or less rolled up the sidewalks by eight-thirty, Cole conceded it was a pretty good call. “The lobby bar is open until eleven. We can grab something there.” Meeting her questioning look, he admitted, “Yes, I checked the hours earlier. You know me. It’s all about the logistics.”

She was already slipping her shoes back on. “In that case, let’s do it. Now that I’m officially off-duty until tomorrow morning, I want a real drink, too, a stiff one, with ice—lots of ice.”

A stiff one—God, if she only knew. He cast a self-conscious glance downward to his pants front. Fortunately his tuxedo jacket was long enough to partially cover what he was sure must be a full-fledged woody.

Meeting her gaze again, he said, “Unfortunately I don’t get to go off-duty. I’m on 24/7 until we land back in Manhattan.”

Halfway across the carpet, she turned back and rolled her eyes at him. With her loose hair waving around her shoulders and that adorably silly grin on her face, she looked so much like the Alex of five years ago he almost did a double take. “You can drink water if you like. On second thought, this is the Caribbean, so unless it’s bottled I wouldn’t recommend it.” She whipped around to face him. “Either way, I’m going and since you’re my bodyguard, you have to come, too. Those are the rules.”

A sober nod punctuated the pronouncement, the effect spoiled by yet another of those wonderful, unguarded, sunshine sexy smiles.

So she hadn’t forgotten to smile after all.

She reached for him, her slender hand wrapping around his wrist and tugging him toward the door. There was no way she could have begun to budge him, but she didn’t have to. He was more than willing to follow her anywhere she wanted to go—New York, Belize, the Jaws of Hell. So long as she looked up at him with those laughing honey-brown eyes and sexy carefree smile, he didn’t care where they went or when or if they came back.

With her hand cuffing him, for the time being he gave himself up to the insanity. “Okay, okay, I’m sold. I’m there. Just promise me this time you won’t eat the worm.”