Bridget
One of theworst things about having a round-the-clock bodyguard was living with them. It hadn’t been an issue with Booth because we’d gotten along so well, but living in close quarters with Rhys put on me on edge.
Suddenly, my house seemed too small, and everywhere I looked, Rhys was there.
Drinking coffee in the kitchen. Stepping out of the shower. Working out in the backyard, his muscles flexing and his skin gleaming with sweat.
It all felt strangely domestic in a way it hadn’t felt with Booth, and I didn’t like it one bit.
“Aren’t you hot in those clothes?” I asked one unseasonably warm day as I watched Rhys do push-ups.
Even though it was fall, the temperature hovered in the high seventies, and a bead of sweat trickled down my neck despite my light cotton dress and the ice-cold lemonade in my hands.
Rhys must be roasting in his black shirt and workout shorts.
“Trying to get me to take my shirt off?” He continued his pushups, not sounding the least bit winded.
Warmth that had nothing to do with the weather spread across my cheeks. “You wish.” It wasn’t the most inspired answer, but it was all I could think of.
Honestly, I was curious about seeing Rhys shirtless. Not because I wanted to sneak a peek at his abs—which I grudgingly admitted had to be fantastic if the rest of his body was anything to go by—but because he seemed so determined not to be shirtless. Even when he left the bathroom after a shower, he was fully dressed.
Maybe he was uncomfortable getting half-naked in front of a client, but I had a feeling not much discomfited Rhys Larsen. It had to be something else. An embarrassing tattoo, maybe, or a strange skin condition that only affected his torso.
Rhys finished his pushups and moved on to the pull-up bar. “You gonna keep ogling me, or you got something I can help you with, princess?”
The warmth intensified. “I wasn’t ogling you. I was secretly praying for you to get heatstroke.If you do, I’m not helping you. I have…a book to read.”
Dear Lord, what am I saying? I didn’t make sense even to myself.
After our moment of solidarity at The Crypt two weeks ago, Rhys and I had settled right back into our familiar pattern of snark and sarcasm, which I hated, because I wasn’t a typically snarky and sarcastic person.
A shadow of a smirk filled the corners of Rhys’s mouth, but it disappeared before it blossomed into something real. “Good to know.”
By now, I was sure I was beet red, but I lifted my chin and reentered the house with as much dignity as I could muster.
Let Rhys bake in the sun. I hoped he did get heatstroke. Maybe then, he wouldn’t have enough energy to be such an ass.
Sadly, he didn’t, and he had plenty of energy left to be an ass.
“How’s the book?” he drawled later, when he’d finished his workout and I’d grabbed the closest book I could find before he entered the living room.
“Riveting.” I tried to focus on the page instead of the way Rhys’s sweat-dampened shirt clung to his torso.
Six-pack abs for sure. Maybe even an eight-pack. Not that I was counting.
“Sure seems that way.” Rhys’s face remained impassive, but I could hear the mocking bent in his voice. He walked to the bathroom, and without looking back, he added, “By the way, princess, the book is upside down.”
I slammed the hardcover shut, my skin blazing with embarrassment.
God, he was insufferable. A gentleman wouldn’t point something like that out, but Rhys Larsen was no gentleman. He was the bane of my existence.
Unfortunately, I was the only person who thought so. Everyone else found his grumpiness charming, including my friends and the people at the shelter, so I couldn’t even commiserate with them over his bane-of-my-existence-ness.
“What’s the deal with your new bodyguard?” Wendy, one of the other long-term volunteers at Wags & Whiskers, whispered. She snuck a peek at where Rhys sat in the corner like a rigid statue of muscles and tattoos. “He’s got that whole strong, silent thing going on. It’s hot.”
“You say that, but you’re not the one who has to live with him.”
It was two days after the upside-down book debacle, and Rhys and I hadn’t exchanged any words since except good morning and good night.
I didn’t mind. It made it easier to pretend he didn’t exist.
Wendy laughed. “I’ll gladly change places with you. My roommate keeps microwaving fish and stinking up the kitchen, and she looks nothing like your bodyguard.” She tightened her ponytail and stood. “Speaking of changing places, I have to head out for study group. Do you have everything you need?”
I nodded. I’d taken over Wendy’s shift enough times by now to have the routine down pat.
After she left, silence descended, so thick it draped around me like a cloak.
Rhys didn’t move from his corner spot. We were alone, but his eyes roved around the playroom like he expected an assassin to pop out from behind the cat condo at any minute.
“Does it get exhausting?” I scratched Meadow, the shelter’s newest cat, behind the ears.
“What?”
“Being on all the time.” Constantly alert, searching for danger. It was his job, but I’d never seen Rhys relax, not even when it was just the two of us at home.
“No.”
“You know you can give more than one-word answers, right?”