Nothing Left to Lose (Guarded Hearts 1)

My heart sank. “What time did you get up, Baby Girl?” I asked, pulling her to me. I raked my eyes over her face, noticing again how tired she looked.

“I don’t know. About five? Can we go and eat, please?” she whined, begging me with her eyes to let it go.

I sighed deeply as I traced the shadow that resided under her eye. That shadow broke my heart. “Okay,” I agreed. “Maybe we could get an early night tonight or something? I didn’t sleep too great either.”

She groaned and wrapped her arm around my waist, pressing herself to me. “You weren’t worried about me all night, were you?”

“Nah, bed was lumpy. You really do think too much of yourself,” I joked, turning her towards the door and pushing her out as she burst into a fit of giggles. When we got to the end of the hallway, Dean pressed the button for the elevator, and we all headed in and downstairs to the restaurant for breakfast.

As we stepped into the restaurant and were shown to an empty table, I tried extremely hard not to notice that the tables closest to us had stopped eating and that the middle aged lady had her forkful of eggs halfway to her mouth as she stared at us unashamedly.

Anna squirmed in her chair, so I slid my hand across the table and took hers, squeezing gently. I was graced with a dazzling smile in return. Breakfast was awkward, to say the least. While we were eating, we were approached several times by other guests who were gushing about how excited they were to meet us, and how they had voted for Anna’s father. After posing for a couple of shots on people’s cell phones, I finally decided enough was enough and discreetly nodded to Dean. He then kept everyone else at a respectable distance, but that didn’t stop the whispering, staring, pointing or discreet photos where people were taking selfies with us in the background.

Anna hardly ate anything, just pushed her food around her plate and kept glancing around nervously. When I finally realised that this wasn’t going to get any better, I stood and held my hand down to her. “Let’s go get a coffee in the bar area. Hopefully no one will be in there at this time of day. It’s got to be better than this,” I suggested.

Her hand slid into mine as she smiled gratefully. “Hope so.” She sidled up to me and leant her head on my shoulder as we walked through the lobby, again trying to ignore people that stopped walking just to stare at us. Thankfully, when we got to the bar, it was fairly empty, apart from two or three people that I recognised from the party last night. They didn’t pay a blind bit of notice to us as we slipped in and sat on one of the plush comfortable sofas. Dean and Mike stopped at the door, shoulder to shoulder, clearly blocking the entrance so that we could have some well needed privacy.

After ordering a couple of espressos, I took Anna’s hand again, this time noticing how she winced slightly. I frowned, confused as I pulled her hand up, meaning to look at it. “Your hand okay?” She nodded, tightening her grip on me so that I couldn’t let go. Her eyes told a different story though. I gently pulled my hand out of hers and groaned when I saw four little crescent shaped cuts on the palm of her hand.

She tugged her hand out of my grip and sighed. “It’s fine,” she mumbled.

My heart sank as I looked at her, silently begging her to stop shutting me out and telling me she was fine when, clearly, she wasn’t. “Bad dream?” I inquired, not actually wanting to know the answer but, at the same time, needing to. She nodded, and my stomach clenched with anger. If I ever managed to get within a few feet of Carter Thomas, I would beat him to death without hesitation. I swallowed the raw anger that tasted so acrid in my mouth. “Want to talk about it?”

She closed her eyes and shook her head, picking up her coffee and wrapping her hands around it as she blew the steam from the rim. “No.”

I nodded in acceptance. Silence washed over us for a minute before I decided to change the subject. “So, do you have much to pack?”

She smiled gratefully. “Not really. It’ll only take like ten minutes. I’m keeping those shoes from last night; I think they’ll look super cute with a pair of jeans. What do you think?” she asked excitedly.

I grinned because she could get so excited about a pair of shoes. “Yeah, I guess. I didn’t really see them.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I showed you them.”

I nodded. “Yeah you did, but you also showed me your legs at the same time. My eyes didn’t make it down as far as the feet.”

She giggled and slapped me on the shoulder. “You’re such a pervert!” she scolded, shaking her head, trying to look like she disapproved but failing miserably.

I grinned and nodded. “Only around you, Baby Girl.” She rolled her eyes. She never believed me when I said that, but it was true. Since I’d met her, I hadn’t even looked at another woman, and I just didn’t want to either.

Behind us, Dean walked over, talking into his cell phone. “Yeah, I’ll tell them. Yeah, I’m sure we can get it on, it’s fine. Thanks, Cindy.” He slid his cell phone back into his pocket and winced. “Cindy from the press office just called to let me know that the news channel had a reporter at the party, and they’ll be on in five minutes,” he nodded in the direction of a large flat screen TV that was mounted on the wall. “I’ll go see if we can get that turned on.” He strutted off to the bar, talking to the barman for a minute before the black screen flickered to life and then settled on the news channel.