Not loud enough. You had to be loud—she’d figured that out with Richard. You had to be louder than they were, stronger than they thought you could be, and so mean and cold and unforgiving, they called you names.
She knew how to do this. She’d done it before.
“Stop,” she said, and this time the word came out at a satisfying volume. “You’re not putting a fence up on my property. I’m not giving you schematics. I don’t want your help.”
“Didn’t we already cover this a minute ago?”
They had. But she’d been a fool, and she knew when to change tactics. If she gave this man one more inch, he would take over. She’d seen it with Jamie. One day, she and Jamie had been ordinary teenagers, and the next thing she knew her brother had his own armed escort. He was ostensibly an adult now, but he reported his comings and goings to a team of people who monitored his food, screened his friends, and installed an alarm system in his house that had a habit of going off at three a.m. in irritating bursts of shrieking that no one knew how to stop.
Security guards oversaw Jamie’s whole life. They told him where he could go and when, controlled him, choked him. Ellen couldn’t handle that. Not after Richard.
So she folded her arms over her chest and stood up straighter. Caleb’s gaze locked with hers. Let him try, she told herself. Just let him try.
But he only smiled, his eyes too kind and a bit bewildered. “I’m here to help you. The way I see it, Breckenridge put me under contract, but I work for you.”
“Excellent,” she said. Because it didn’t matter whether he was kind. It only mattered that he would wreak havoc with her life if she let him. “In that case, you’re fired.”
Chapter Two
Caleb didn’t know what had happened. A minute ago, Ellen had been high-fiving him. Now she was narrowing her eyes and bracing her bare feet in the grass as though she anticipated an assault.
“You can’t fire me.”
“Well, make up your mind,” she said. “Either you work for me, in which case you’re fired, or you work for somebody else, in which case you’re trespassing.”
Trespassing? “I had your permission to step onto the property.”
“I’m revoking it.”
He checked her expression again. Dead serious. Ellen didn’t want him here.
Tough luck for her, because she had him whether she wanted him or not. He needed this account for about five different reasons, all of them nonnegotiable. Breckenridge said Ellen Callahan had to be kept out of harm’s way, and he was the man for the job.
The trick, apparently, was going to be getting Ellen to accept that. She might dress like a bohemian, but the woman had a drill sergeant’s mouth. Fifteen years in the military police had taught him to tread softly around a mouth like that.
He glanced at his watch, then over at Carly’s place. He’d told her he’d be by at eight to talk about security, but this was more important. He could spare a few minutes.
So what’s going to work on you, Ellen?
Not brute force, obviously. You couldn’t club a woman over the head and force her to accept your protection. If that were an option, he’d have done it to his mom and both his sisters months ago. Feisty lot, the Clarks. Probably explained why he liked women with a bit of steel in their spines.
Because he already liked Ellen Callahan. He’d seen her around town with a towheaded toddler who had to be her son, and she’d certainly caught his eye. Under different circumstances, he might have started angling for her phone number the second he’d witnessed her trying to topple that photographer with her kneecaps. Unfortunately, circumstances being what they were, she was off-limits.
That didn’t mean he couldn’t turn on the charm. Caleb was a big believer in catching flies with honey.
He threw her his best smile, keeping his hands in his pockets and his tone light and easy. “Any chance I could come in for a glass of water while we talk about this? Driving off bad guys is hard work.”
“We don’t have anything to talk about. I already told you, I don’t need a bodyguard. Now if you’ll excuse me, I—”
“I’m not a bodyguard. I’m a security specialist. A thirsty one.”
He smiled again, and Ellen gave a minute shake of her head. Her arms crossed over her breasts and the challenging lift to her chin said, No way.
He’d pushed her too fast.
It was a shame no one had thought to give him a heads-up about Ellen. Caleb expected a hassle from Carly—Carly lived to be a pain in his ass—but he’d figured Jamie Callahan’s sister would be used to security. She’d seemed happy enough when he gave her a hand with the paparazzo.
His mistake.