[4 Seasons 01] Seducing Summer (5 page)

She ran her finger across it. “Nice.”

While she studied it, his gaze caressed her
face, then moved down her neck to the top of her blouse. All the buttons were
done up and there was no sign of her bra, but even so, the triangle of pale
skin revealed by the V at the top sent his heart racing again.

“I’ll finish my calls,” she said, getting
up. “Then we can go home.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She gave him a wry look and disappeared
into her office.

Gene watched her go, conscious that his
lips were curving in a smile.
Men find her fascinating,
Neve had said,
and he could understand why now. She was warm, funny, clever, and sexy, and in
any other circumstances, he might have considered asking her out.

But that wasn’t appropriate here. He
dropped his gaze to his notepad. Picking up his pen, in shorthand he wrote,
Stay
focused
. Neve was right—he couldn’t afford to become embroiled with Callie.
His job was to protect the CEO of the Four Seasons, and he had to concentrate
on that and push all other thoughts to the back of his mind.

Gene spent half an hour typing up the notes
he’d taken from Neve during the day. By five thirty, Callie had finished her
phone calls and announced she was going home.

“I’ll walk you to your car,” Gene said. He
stood and slipped on his jacket.

She locked her office door. “That’s not
necessary.”

“I know. But I’m a gentleman.” He put the
computer to sleep and made sure the desk was tidy, then slid his notepad into
his pocket. “Come on.”

“By the way,” she said as they walked down
the stairs, “you don’t have to wear a suit to work every day. We don’t get a
lot of visitors, and as you know, we’re all about comfort. And of course we’ll
be travelling next week.”

“Thanks,” he said, although he would continue
to wear the suit so he wouldn’t look odd in his bulletproof waistcoat.

Bridget had just closed the shop and was in
the process of tallying up. “Great day,” she said as they entered the back door
of the shop. “Having that Valentine’s Day promotion in the window has brought
loads of guys in.”

“Excellent!” Callie beamed.

“That’s Neve for you,” Bridget said. “She
has all the best ideas.”

“Yes, but you put the display together,
Birdie.” Callie gestured at the window. “It’s amazing.”

Gene had noticed it when he’d arrived for
his interview. “I have to agree,” he said. Letters pasted across the top of the
window read,
Buy the lady in your life a present you’ll both appreciate.
Bridget—blonde, pretty, curvy, and bubbly—had arranged one completely bare male
mannequin standing behind a female one, her head turned a fraction as if she were
watching his hand as it slipped the ribbon strap of her lacy nightie off her
shoulder. It was such a simple pose, but a suggestive, sexy one, and customers
had obviously thought so too.

“We’ve sold heaps of that red lacy
nightie,” Bridget said. “Twice as many as the black one, which surprised me,
and hardly any white. I guess men don’t think the virginal look is in vogue at
the moment.”

They both glanced at him expectantly, as if
asking his opinion. He gave a lazy shrug.
I like them all.
He couldn’t
deny to himself, though, that the thought of Callie in a white lacy bra and
panties didn’t turn him on.

Callie laughed. “We’re off. See you
tomorrow.”

“Have a good evening.” Bridget waved them
goodnight.

They stepped out into the warm February
sunshine and walked around the corner of the block to the car park.

“Which is yours?” Gene asked, although he
knew it was the red Mazda parked against the fence.

She pointed it out, and he walked her over
to it. “Thank you,” she said, with a little wryness to her voice as if to say,
I
could have done that perfectly well on my own, thank you
.

“You’re welcome.” He remembered that he
wasn’t supposed to know that her boyfriend had cheated on her not that long
ago. “Busy evening planned?”

She unlocked the car door and paused. “Not
really. I have a bit of work to finish, then I’ll have dinner. Maybe go out for
a walk before watching
Game of Thrones.
” She smiled.

He fought the urge to ask her to stay
indoors. “What time will your husband be home?”

Lifting a hand, she waggled her ring finger
at him. “Not married.”

“Partner?”

“Nope.”

“Kids?”

“Nope.”

“Boyfriend?”

She smiled, and he realized he was copying
the questions she’d asked him in the office. “No,” she said softly. “No
boyfriend. And quite happy being single, thank you very much.”

“Fair enough.”

“What are you up to?” she asked. “Going
out?”

“Maybe to the gym. Then a quiet evening.
See you tomorrow?”

“Eight thirty sharp.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She rolled her eyes and got in the car.

Gene walked over to his Holden and got in.
He watched her exit the car park, and saw Ian’s car pull out a few seconds
later to follow her home. Ian would shadow her when she went out for her walk,
and would sit outside the house she shared with Rowan while she ate dinner,
watched TV, and slept.

Gene’s hands tightened on the steering
wheel. He hadn’t been completely honest with Neve when he’d described the guy
who’d sent the letters to Phoebe. He hadn’t wanted Neve to worry, so he’d played
down the danger, but the truth was that Darren Kirk wasn’t the emptyheaded,
unfocused maniac Gene had said he was. He was a cool, calm psychopath who’d had
the connections and the money to escape the life sentence he should have
gotten. The worst part of it was that the man he’d killed just days after being
released was the lawyer who hadn’t been able to prevent Kirk from going to
prison, and his wife—who’d been with him—had been seriously injured.

After that, the Special Tactics Group had
taken the death threats very seriously. They’d wanted to take Phoebe and her
daughter somewhere safe until they tracked Kirk down, but Callie had refused—why,
Gene wasn’t quite sure, possibly because Phoebe had downplayed the threat so as
not to alarm her too much and so therefore she hadn’t taken it seriously.
Phoebe had defended her daughter’s right not to have security, but had agreed
privately with the STG to hire Gene’s firm and have a permanent watch on both
herself and Callie.

Gene had read the dossier on Kirk, and the
thought of the cold killer coming after the soft and sensual Callie Summer made
him feel ill. Almost certainly, it had been an empty threat meant to frighten
the prosecutor who’d put Kirk away, but Gene wanted to drive to Callie’s house
and sit outside there himself. To stay by her side and protect her until the
man was caught.

But that was impractical, and besides, she
was just another customer. She was nothing special, not a friend or family
member, and certainly not a love interest. He had a job to do, and he had to
concentrate on that and keep his emotions out of it.

With that in mind, he had things to do
before he was able to call it a day. First, he drove to his house on Massey
Road, high on a hill overlooking the harbor. The wind was getting up and had
whipped the blue-gray water into choppy waves that made the outgoing ferry bob
about like a piece of polystyrene. No wonder it was nicknamed the Vomit Comet,
he thought, feeling a little queasy just looking at it.

He went inside and changed out of his suit
into a T-shirt and sweatpants, then drove to the gym. He’d only planned to have
a quick workout, but while he moved through the various pieces of equipment,
his mind began to wander. Unfortunately, it seemed to want to conjure up images
of a certain strawberry blonde in various pieces of lingerie, and, cross with
himself, he pushed his body harder and longer until he was limp as a beaten
chicken breast and dripping with sweat.

 He showered and changed again, annoyed
with himself for getting carried away. Although he liked to stretch the muscles
around his damaged hip and keep it flexible, he’d pushed it too hard, and it
ached now, a dull throb deep inside. He popped two Panadol, drove home, fought
the urge to pick up takeout on the way, and made himself pasta with a large
salad, which he ate sitting at the table as he checked his emails.

He scrolled through the daily report the
office had sent him of comings and goings around Callie’s office—nothing
suspicious, from the looks of it—then checked the report from Phoebe’s security
team. One operative had recorded that she’d seen a dark-haired, bearded man out
in front of Phoebe’s home in Wellington not once but twice, several hours
apart. He’d only stayed thirty seconds the first time and twenty seconds the
next, but she’d highlighted it as a yellow alert, and Gene copied the photo
she’d taken of him from her parked car and sent it to all his teams and their
contact at the STG so they could watch out for possible sightings of the guy.

Still eating his pasta, he took out the
notepad he’d used during the day and flipped to the pages where he’d made notes
during lunch about Callie’s office and her general routine. He typed them up,
mentally running through possible problems in his head, planning out the best
route to take if an incident occurred, thinking about ways he might be able to
improve security there without her noticing.

Then he started up a new file called
“Security on Tour.” After staring at the title for a while, he pushed away from
the table, took a beer out of the fridge, and went outside onto the deck. Easing
into his favorite deckchair with his sore hip, he took a long swig of the beer
and stared out to sea.

Working as a personal protection officer often
involved lots of tedious, dull work—from surveillance to intelligence gathering
to threat recognition and assessment. Facts and data were important, and as it
was easy to miss little details in a sea of information, it required a keen eye
and constant concentration to make sure nothing important was overlooked.

But it also involved a large percentage of
instinct. In his days in the Army, and then in security, Gene had learned to
rely on his gut feelings, and now they were telling him that the real threat to
Callie—if there were to be one—would come when they were out on the road. It
would be harder for whoever was following them to keep track of them, but it
would be a lot easier for a hitman to get close to her. Unless Gene revealed
his mission, and possibly even if he did, he couldn’t stop her shopping, eating
at restaurants, or going out for walks late at night. All he could do was
remain as vigilant as possible, and do his best to protect her when they were
together.

In the pocket of his jeans, his phone rang.
He pulled it out and checked the screen, expecting it to be someone from his
office, then smiled when he saw the name of his best mate.

“Hey, Felix.” He lay back in the deckchair,
one arm tucked under his head. “How’s things?”

“Hey, Gene. Yeah, all good here, thanks.”

“Finally got back to work?” Gene liked to
tease his lawyer friend about his extra-long summer break. Felix worked at the
biggest law firm in Wellington, and, like many firms in New Zealand, they
closed for several weeks over Christmas and January.

“Only just. Apparently some companies make
you go back to work before February. It’s shocking.”

Gene laughed. “What’s up?”

“Thought I’d share some news with you.
Coco’s pregnant.”

“Ah, mate.” Gene was genuinely pleased for
his friend. Felix had married the head secretary of his law firm the previous
year, and he’d mentioned that they’d decided to try for a family straight away.
“That’s wonderful news.”

“Yeah, we’re pleased. It took a while, and
there’s always that niggling thought in the back of your mind that you’re not
going to be able to have kids, you know? So it’s a relief.”

“When’s it due?”

“She’s just three months, so July.”

“Great. I bet she’s happy.”

“A mixture of nervous and excited, yeah.”
Felix chuckled. “Anyway, how did it go today?” Gene had told him about his
undercover mission.

“Well, she agreed to take me on, so that’s
the first step done. She’s touring the country starting Monday, so I’ll be away
for a couple of weeks.”

“What’s she like? As bad as her mother made
out?”

Gene watched a ferry heading toward the
harbor, the sea behind it glinting in the evening sunshine, the color of
Callie’s eyes. “Ah, no. Not really. She’s nice. Young. Smart. Funny.”

Felix said nothing for a moment. Then he
said, “I see.” Gene could almost hear the smirk behind the words.

“Don’t start,” he said wryly.

“And she works for a lingerie firm? Does
she get to try out some free samples?”

Gene decided not to tell him about Neve’s
parties. “Honestly, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m her personal
protection officer—that means I have to be glued to her side for the next three
months. It’s going to be torture.”

“Oh…” Felix drew the word out. “You really
do like her. I was teasing before.”

“There’s nothing not to like. She’s
gorgeous. It’s going to be like the Temptation of St. Anthony. Except my name’s
not Anthony. And I’m no saint.”

“Now ain’t that the truth.”

“Felix…”

“I don’t see the problem.”

“The problem is that I have a job to do. I
can’t afford to get distracted.”

“Surely it’ll be easier to protect her if
you’re… you know, sleeping in the same bed?”

“Jeez.”

“Look, I can’t remember the last time I
heard you talk about a girl with a smile in your voice. Why not have a bit of
fun over the summer?”

Gene couldn’t stop himself smiling at that.
“That happens to be her surname.”

“Summer?”

“Yeah.”

“Well there you go. It’s a sign. You’re
heading north next week, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, south first, then north after my
birthday.”