“Bodyguard work,” Derek said.
“Sure. That too.”
“You’re hired,” he said.
“You don’t need to state that. I know I already am.”
“You really are confident, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Most could say the same about you. I can start immediately.”
“You can start tomorrow,” he said. “I have a fundraiser function where I’m accepting an entrepreneurship award. I can’t take you there with me.”
“You’re not going alone. There’s a death threat looming over you. You hired me, so I’m going to protect you no matter where you go,” I said.
“Well, you can’t go dressed like you are. And you don’t strike me as the kind of woman who has a formal dress simply lying around somewhere.”
“Do I strike you as the kind of woman who knows how to shop??
??
His eyes raked up and down my body as his cheeks twitched with a grin. Of course, he would take that as a prompt to study my “assets” again. For a man whose life apparently hung in the balance, he sure as hell didn’t act like it did.
I was still having a hard time convincing myself this situation was as bad as Deac made it out to be when we were communicating.
“You’ll need to be more elegant. Sexy, if you’re coming with me. I have an image to keep up, especially if this is going to stay out of the press,” Derek said.
“I’m trained to take down entire regimes, Mr. Steele. I can walk in a pair of heels.”
“But if you plan on being at my side for the duration of all of this, you can’t throw flags at all. That means an entire wardrobe change.”
“Question, Mr. Steele. Would you make a male bodyguard do this same thing?” I asked.
“I wouldn't hesitate in putting him in suits that matched the quality of mine. He would need to blend in just as much. Your current wardrobe is fine for the house, but at my company and at my functions, it is not.”
“Fine,” I said.
“And nothing is to be mentioned to the press. At all.”
“Confidentiality is something I take very seriously. It comes with me, and it’s also stated in my contract,” I said.
“Good. If anyone asks, you’ve been hired on as my new personal assistant.”
“Are you sure Emma will be okay with that?”
“A busy man like me can have two personal assistants. Emma holds down everything I do at the company. You will hold down everything I do in my personal life. It will explain why you come and go with me, as well as why you come home with me.”
“I agree to your terms,” I said.
As the two of us ate dinner, I kept my sights on the exits and the front door. Physically, this job was going to be easy. But mentally? It was going to be exhausting. This man was annoying and a pain in the fucking ass. He was cocky, insolent, and a sugarcoated womanizer. I had spent enough time with him in his own surroundings to know how much I would want to kill him once this was all over with.
If there was some sort of threat looming over his idiotic little head, I could see why someone would want him dead. Which didn’t make my job any easier.
Nonetheless, no matter what I believed, I had to be professional. If a new wardrobe was required, then I had the money to do that. With the amount of money this man was going to be paying on my contract, I could replace my wardrobe with the finest fabric one hundred times over and still be able to by my own fucking private island.
Annoying or not, this contract was going to set me up for the rest of my life.
This guy was all about money, though, and that was going to get old. He was one of those guys who believed his money made him powerful. Not his intelligence or his empire. Not the people around him or those he chose to surround himself with personally. But his money. He felt his money could buy him anything. Any house. Any car. Any woman.