“Tell me why you’re such a fucking idiot, Saint? Why? Your job is to keep your goddamned opinions to yourself and keep the client safe. Was that too much for you to grasp? Really?” Lanny’s face was red, and he couldn’t look right at me. I’d already felt like a royal ass before he’d called me in there. “It would be one thing if this was the first time you let your fucking mouth get you into trouble, but we both know it’s hardly the first time and it sure as hell won’t be the last. You barely talk to anyone around here, yet you can’t keep your fucking mouth shut on the job?”
He ran his hands through his buzzed hair, making a scritching sound. “Fuck,” he muttered, winding down a bit. “Jesusfuckingchrist you’re a complete liability to this company. Total asshole.”
Lanny looked up at me finally, pinning me with a hard stare. I just looked back at him, knowing better than to speak before being spoken to.
He let out a breath. “Speak.”
“That woman was an idiot,” I said under my breath. And I meant it. The teeny-bopper pop singer I’d been in charge of had strutted and snorted her way through five clubs one night while I was protecting her, and she’d treated every server like shit. I had kept my mouth shut for more than eight hours of disgusting behavior and treatment of others before finally muttering under my breath, “Spoiled fucking brat needs a spanking.”
It was never meant to be overheard. But TMZ had aired the video clip the next day, and I quickly realized someone had caught it on film. Lucky me.
Lan sat back down behind his desk. “I should fire you.”
“Maybe.”
“You cost me a good client.”
“If you say so.”
He rolled his eyes. “This is where you apologize, beg for your job, and remind me of why I can’t afford to lose you, jackass.”
I did my best to remain calm. No matter how angry he was, I knew Lanny wasn’t going to fire me. He was a good man. And he knew if I’d said what I had, it was because I’d truly been pushed to the limits. It didn’t make it right, but it made it understandable.
“I’m adorable,” I said with a straight face.
He pinched the bridge of his nose and tried not to smile. “I’m not sure you’re my type.”
“You should be so lucky.”
“Saint, you’re killing me. I can’t send you out again right now, and you know it,” he said.
I gritted my teeth as thoughts of hours of downtime flashed through my head. I couldn’t handle being idle. “I need this job,” I said in a low voice. “And I didn’t lose my shit until I’d been working twenty hours in a row for the eighth day straight and she demanded I wake up a single mother of two small children so Gemma could have a particular flavor of ice cream. It was four in the morning.”
“When has she ever not been a pain in the ass? You knew that going into this assignment, Saint. And I’m not firing you, but I am putting you on a paid leave. You’re benched until further notice.”
My stomach dropped. Benched? What did that even mean? I was a bodyguard. How could I guard a body if I was stuck at home?
Lanny flipped through folders on his desk until he found the one he was looking for. “We have a new client who needs private self-defense classes. He happens to live in your hometown, so I thought that might be something you could do while the media attention dies down.”
I felt my nostrils flare. “What do you mean? Like teach some lady how to foil a purse snatcher?”
He pierced me with those eyes again. “No, like teach a little book nerd how to defend himself in a fight. The guy’s sister is actually the one who hired us. She said he’s been acting skittish lately but won’t say why. She’s worried about him. The young man himself seemed spooked as well, but when I tried to talk him into regular bodyguard services simply due to his family’s wealth, he said that was ridiculous. At the very least I was able to talk him into learning some self-defense.”
Something about that seemed off to me. “That’s… odd,” I said. “If he’s suddenly skittish, there must be a reason.”
“I agree, and I think you should look into it. But the man’s grandfather is Jonathan Stiel, so this is a big fucking deal. Making him happy with these sessions could lead to a much more lucrative full-service contract for us. As you can imagine there are inherent facility and personnel security needs involved in running a company like the Stiel Corporation.”
“Stiel like the Stiel Foundation? The Stiel building downtown? Jesus. That would be a huge contract. Good for you, Lan,” I said, taking the file he handed me.