Unexpected (The Protectors 10)

And he sure as hell didn’t look pleased about the prospect now.

I had to admit, he looked more engaged than he had earlier this morning, but I doubted it would last, especially when his phone continued to vibrate off and on for several minutes.

Then my phone rang.

“Don’t answer that,” Shaw ordered before I could even reach for the phone.

I reached for it anyway.

“Nash,” Shaw said in warning. Since I wasn’t about to ditch protocol, not to mention fuck with a guy who could likely rearrange my internal organs with one punch, I ignored him.

“Nash,” Shaw repeated, but this time his voice was different. Gone was the no-nonsense tone. I looked up at him and felt something go through me at the way he was looking at me.

He’d looked at me in a lot of different ways over the past week since I’d first arrived at his home, but he’d never looked at me like he was now.

“Please,” Shaw murmured softly, and I could tell it killed him to do it.

A shiver of awareness seeped into every nerve ending as I held the man’s gaze. His bright blue eyes were alight with some emotion I couldn’t quite name. I held my phone hard enough to potentially break the damn thing.

Follow fucking protocol, Nash. This man is not your friend!

“I have to at least check who it is,” I finally said.

Shaw sent me a nod. I quickly flipped the phone over and saw that it was an unknown caller. The need to answer it was great, but for some reason, the need to see the life stay in Shaw’s eyes for a while longer was greater.

Jesus, Nash, get a fucking grip.

I put the phone away and tried not to enjoy the spark of warmth that went through me when a small smile graced Shaw’s lips.

My phone rang a couple more times over the following few minutes, and I did as Shaw asked and ignored the calls. I only half-listened as Nathan and Shaw began talking, but it took everything in me to keep my eyes on the security monitors in front of me when Nathan flat-out admitted to Shaw he was gay.

“Bet that felt good,” Shaw said.

Nathan let out a little laugh and said, “You have no idea.”

“Yeah, Nathan, I do,” Everett murmured.

I couldn’t stop myself from looking over at Shaw as his quiet words sank in.

No way.

No FUCKING way.

Heat flooded my entire system as Nathan expressed the disbelief I was feeling. I managed to catch Shaw saying something about his son not speaking to him when Nathan pointed out he’d been married, but I couldn’t really process what exactly that meant.

Everett Shaw, former president of the United States, is gay.

Everett Shaw is gay.

Shaw is gay.

Holy fuck.

“I knew something was wrong when I married Elanor, but I didn’t know what it was. I was in denial for a really long time…”

That was as much as I could bear to hear. Not only were his words hitting just a little too close to home, I felt like I was violating the man’s privacy by being there. Yes, he knew I’d overhear him, but still, it wasn’t right.

I quietly turned and hurried down the hall and out the front door. I began sucking in big gulps of air.

Everett Shaw is gay.

I told myself my body was shaking because of the shock, but I knew it wasn’t true. But I refused to give words to the real reason. Instead, I busied myself with walking the fence line. Twenty minutes later, I heard rather than saw the proof that all hell was about to break loose.

As Vincent’s muscle car roared into the driveway a moment later, the tires squealing as he hit the brakes just in time to keep from plowing into the garage door, my nerves got the better of me.

“They’re okay!” I shouted as Vincent got out of the car, since I was still a good hundred yards away from the house. With his gun in hand, he sent me what could only be classified as a deadly look and then strode into the house. Concern for Shaw had me running toward the house. I was almost at the door when it opened. I nearly slammed into Shaw as he came out and he quickly put his hand up and flattened it on my chest to stop my forward movement.

“Hold on there, son,” he said.

Something about him calling me son pissed me off, though I wasn’t sure why. And I couldn’t give it too much thought because heat and electricity were spiraling out from the spot where his hand was resting on my chest.

All that sensation and it was… fuck, it was going straight to my balls. My dick hardened in my pants as Shaw lifted his eyes to meet mine. I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing, especially since he quickly shuttered his eyes and then dropped his hand. He pushed past me and said, “We should go.”