Lisa Childs - His Christmas Assignment

“I’m quitting,” she finished.

Logan jumped up from the chair behind his desk and cursed. “Damn it—”

“You were just about to fire me,” Candace pointed out. “This is for the best, and we both know it.” She turned then and finally faced Garek. Her blue eyes had never been so cold as she stared at him.

Conversely, heat rushed through Garek as his temper ignited. But before he could say anything, Candace pushed past him. He reached out and grasped her arm.

She stared down at his hand. Her voice as cold as her gaze, she said, “Don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me.”

He would have teased her, as he had incessantly for the past year. But he sensed that her coldness was just a thin veneer for deeper emotions.

Candace Baker was strong. She was nearly as tall as he was, and she was all lean muscle. But there was also a vulnerability about her that she desperately tried to hide beneath a tough attitude. Just like the coldness, neither was who she really was.

“I didn’t figure you for a quitter,” he goaded her.

“You don’t know me,” she said as she jerked her arm free of his grasp. “And you never will...”

Before he could challenge her claim, she was gone. And he couldn’t have that. He just couldn’t have that...

* * *

“I’m a fool,” Candace berated herself as she tossed clothes into the open suitcase on her bed. “I am such a fool...”

Not for quitting. Hell, she should have done that a year ago. She was a fool because she’d waited too long. And mostly because she had let him get to her.

How?

She knew what Garek Kozminski was. And unlike everyone else, she wasn’t going to forget—because she couldn’t let herself forget. In addition to being a killer and a criminal, he was also a flirt. Just a flirt...

That was why he kept teasing her. And looking at her...

She shivered even now thinking about how that silvery-gray gaze was always on her, touching her like a physical caress. He was just teasing her. He couldn’t really want to touch her. He couldn’t really want her .

She was always the buddy , the gal-pal —never the woman a man actually desired. So he was just messing with her for his own amusement. She was not amused. She was furious. And the more he flirted with her, the most frustrated she got. That was why she had lost her temper with her boss.

The doorbell rang, echoing throughout her bedroom from the wooden box on the dark blue painted wall. She doubted it was Logan paying her a visit. He had obviously been about to fire her before Garek had interrupted him.

After what he must have overheard her saying about him, why had Garek tried to stop Logan? Instead of insisting his brother-in-law terminate her on the spot, Garek had actually tried to talk her out of quitting.

But he didn’t know her. And around him, she wasn’t certain that she knew herself anymore.

The doorbell rang again, or rather incessantly, as if someone were pressing hard on the button. With a sigh she turned away from her bed and headed down the hall. But before she could even reach the front door, it opened. She knew that it had been locked; she always locked her door. And nobody else had a key to her place.

She reached for her holster only to realize she had left it—and her weapon—on her bed with the half-packed suitcase. But why would someone break into her place?

She had nothing of value. And while she had once brought a Payne Protection client to her apartment in order to guard the woman, she was alone now.

But then she was no longer alone as the intruder boldly sauntered into her apartment. He was incredibly tall with lean muscles and blond hair that nearly touched his shoulders. Her breath caught, but she shouldn’t have been surprised. Who else would have so easily picked her high-tech lock but Garek Kozminski?

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded to know.

“I need to talk to you,” he replied. But he was looking at her that way he always looked at her—like she was an ice cream cone he wanted to lick.

“So you picked my lock and let yourself inside?”

He shrugged as if breaking and entering was inconsequential. But surely he knew there were consequences for crimes; he had spent time in prison for at least one of the probably many offenses he had committed. “You didn’t answer the doorbell.”

“There are reasons people don’t answer their doorbells,” she pointed out. “I could have been gone.” If she’d packed faster, she would have been gone. That urge she’d had to run intensified—probably because she had come face-to-face with the reason she wanted to run. That she needed to run...

His lips curving into a smug grin, he said, “But you’re here.”

“Not for long,” she said as she spun around and headed back down the hall toward her bedroom. It wasn’t too late. She could still escape.

But he followed her. “You’re packing? Where the hell are you going?”

She paused as she was about to toss a sweater into the suitcase and realized that she had no idea. She had no plan. She’d only known she needed to leave—to get away for a while. Then she could decide if she wanted to come back. Ever.

“You don’t know,” he surmised.

“Anywhere you’re not,” she replied.

He clasped a hand to his heart. “Oh, that hurts—like a knife through the heart.” Despite his playful tone, there was something in his gray gaze—something almost like real pain and regret. Did he actually care that she wanted to get away from him?

“Do you have a heart?” she wondered.

“Yes,” he replied. “So much so that I convinced Logan you’re a better man for this job than I am.”

“Man?” Now she knew what he meant about the knife through the heart; a sharp pang in her chest felt as if he’d driven his blade deep.

“Yeah, that assignment you wanted—it’s all yours,” he magnanimously offered.

She shook her head. “I quit.”

“Because you wanted that assignment,” he said.

“No, I didn’t.” She hadn’t wanted that assignment; playing bodyguard to some reality star turned B-movie actress held no appeal for her.

His gray eyes narrowed as he stared at her. “You just didn’t want me to have it?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Why not?” he asked. “What would I steal or who would I kill if I took this assignment?”

He had definitely overheard her argument with their boss. Her face heated with embarrassment—not over what he’d heard as much as having to explain why she hadn’t wanted him guarding a woman who rarely wore clothes on camera, or according to the tabloids, off camera either. She wasn’t certain she understood why herself.

She wasn’t certain about anything anymore.

She shrugged. “It’s a high-profile assignment—one that will raise the awareness of Payne Protection to the national level.”

“Last year—all the attempts on Cooper’s and Logan’s and Parker’s lives—raised the awareness of Payne Protection,” he pointed out. “That’s why an LA actress wants to employ one of our bodyguards. We’re the best.”

She wanted to argue the “we,” but Logan had been right earlier. He and Parker probably wouldn’t have survived if not for Garek’s help.

“That assignment doesn’t require the best,” she said—since she suspected the entire need for a bodyguard was just the actress desperately trying to get some more minutes of fame.

“Then why didn’t you want me to take it?” he asked.

She shrugged. She wasn’t about to admit it had bothered her a lot to think of him with a scantily clad reality star. “It doesn’t matter now.”