Lift You Up (Rivers Brothers 1)

"How about when the time comes, you come and help me pick one out?"

My belly wobbled as my brain tried hard to reason with it, remind myself that he meant it as a friend, not anything else. Even if picking out puppies was absolutely something couples did.

"I'm sure I could arrange that. If I am out of hiding by then."

Kingston's chest deflated on a sigh, letting me know instantly he hadn't had any more luck today than the day before.

"We'll get you out of hiding, sweetheart. It's just proving harder than expected. Harry, it seemed, had no family left. And not a friend in the world."

"That sadly doesn't surprise me. He wasn't exactly pleasant to get along with most of the time."

"I'll get there. Just have to start looking in other directions. So what are you having trouble with?" he asked, gesturing toward my hand.

"You know twos and sevens are completely different looking," I told him with a smirk. "If you need some help with it, I'm sure one of the Mallick children can drag out some of that fancy lined paper from second grade and give you a quick lesson."

"Smartass," he said with a smile as he reached for the paper.

His hand closed over mine, shocking, unexpected,the contact making a warmness glide through my stomach as each of my nerve endings set to high alert, taking in the callouses on the pads of his hands, the length of his fingers, the warmth of his skin.

"Five-two-two," he mumbled off the number.

"Wait wait wait," I said, surprise making it possible to focus on something other than the feel of his hand on mine. "How are they both twos? They look nothing alike."

"You're looking at me like you're expecting a rational answer, Savvs. I 'm afraid I don't have one. I just write like a toddler."

"I, ah," I was too distracted by his closeness, his scent, the warmth emanating off him to remember what I was going to say. "What time is it?"

"Just after five," he offered. "You've been working a long time."

"Once I figured out how everything worked, it was easy. A receptionist might be a good idea in the future. This was a lot of paperwork."

It was a lot of paperwork about a lot of scary things. I tried not to look. I knew the files were confidential. But sometimes your eye honed in on something. Or sometimes words jumped out at you.

Words like stalker, rapist, abusive ex tended to be leaping words.

It wasn't like I didn't know Kingston was often involved with difficult, dangerous things. People didn't often look for private security when their lives were just status quo. They came to people like King when a wrench was thrown in the works, when something scary happened and they didn't know how to handle it.

While a lot of his jobs handled basic, mundane things such as installing surveillance systems or teaching big corporations how to handle an active shooter situation or a disgruntled employee - or both - many of the other cases seemed to involve him being a bodyguard, someone who was supposed to be there to catch the bullets or tips of knives or whatever else anyone might use to hurt one of his clients.

The paper in my hand belonged to a case where the ex-wife was sure her ex-husband was showing up in the middle of the night to aerate and treat her lawn. He was, apparently, anal about such things even though he didn't live on the property anymore and, what's more, she had a restraining order to explicitly keep him from being there.

Okay, so maybe there were no leaping words in the file, but when you saw that the subject matter was Lawn Care Criminal, you kind of had to look. I was sure an actual receptionist at the company would do the same, so I didn't feel too guilty.

Besides, I got a nice little chuckle at the vision of a middle-aged man with thinning hair and a hangover waist parking his car down the block then sneaking up the street like a prowler dressed all in black, slipping on spiked shoes, then carefully walking every foot of the front lawn before spraying it down with some contraption he had strapped to his back, all the while starting at every rustling leaf or wandering outdoor cat.

That was some funny stuff.

I hoped Kingston got to see it that way as well.

That the job didn't harden him too much, put him too on-edge to be able to appreciate a story such as that.

"I know. My brothers always get on my ass about it when I ask if one of them wants to lend me a hand. I was thinking of offering the job to one of the older Mallick kids to get some extra income. But some of the shit that comes through here," he said, shaking his head, refusing eye contact. "I know they know about it. But that doesn't mean I personally want to expose them to some of the uglier aspects of life. The awful things some human beings do to other people. It's not the place for a kid."