Nothing Left to Lose (22 page)

“So how does he
get all of these women then?” I asked, grinning after hearing a
tale of Nate scoring with three women in one night – and then it
turned out that two of them were sisters, so he gotten a drink
poured over his head.

He smirked in
my direction. “It’s the uniform. Girls like the uniform.”

“Ahh.” His
meaning was clear. “So you score in yours too then I bet.” My mind
flicked back to the photo I’d seen of him in his uniform. He was
right; the uniform was a definite pantie-moistener.

He shrugged
awkwardly. “Sometimes I guess,” he admitted.

“Did you bring
it with you?” I asked. Immediately my face flooded with heat as my
insides squirmed with embarrassment at asking that question.
Holy shit, Anna, you are on fire today!

He grinned.
“Why, do you want to see it?” he flirted.

I gulped; the
answer to that question was ‘heck yeah’, but I refused to admit it.
“Sure, why not. I can handle it, I have considerable self-control,”
I lied, shrugging.

He chuckled,
grinning wickedly. “Yeah, much to my disappointment.” He shook his
head. “I didn’t bring it. I’m undercover, remember? I’ll show you
some other time if you want,” he offered, turning back to watch the
road.
Oh heck yeah, I would certainly like to see him in that
uniform!
I didn’t say that though, and quickly changed the
subject to his shooting.

When we pulled
up at the house, I was a little disappointed. I genuinely liked
spending time with him, but there was just too much pressure
here.

“So, you wanna
go do something? Swimming maybe?” he offered as we climbed out of
the car. “In the indoor heated pool, I meant, not the ice water
again,” he added quickly, shuddering.

I laughed at
that. “Er… there’s something I really want to do first, so maybe in
like an hour or something?” I suggested, raising my eyebrows.
Yesterday, while shopping, I’d seen the Apple store and realised
that Ashton needed an iPod if he was going to survive college. I
was pretty sure he didn’t have one, and I had a spare, brand new
one that I’d bought for myself a few months ago when I thought I’d
lost mine. Music was a college attendee’s survival essential; he’d
need that to keep himself sane.

He looked at me
sceptically. “You’re not leaving the house though, are you?”

“No, I’ll be in
my bedroom.” I rolled my eyes at his assumption. He obviously took
this guard thing way too seriously.

“Okay good. An
hour’s fine then, I’ll go finish that book.” He shrugged, smiling a
half smile.

“I’ll have to
make sure to pack the other three for you if you’re that into
them,” I teased.

He just rolled
his eyes and didn’t bother to answer me. On the way through the
house, we stopped by the kitchen to grab a drink and sandwich for
lunch. I said goodbye to Ashton for the hour, taking my food to my
room. As soon as I was alone, I pulled out my laptop and started to
sync my spare iPod to my iTunes, copying all of my music over to it
for him. Having no idea what kind of music he liked, I had no clue
if there was anything in my collection that he would like – it
would be a start for him though, at least.

After exactly
an hour, he knocked on my door. I winced and looked up worriedly
because the music was still syncing. “Ashton, I’m not done, I’ll be
a bit longer then I’ll come get you, okay?” I called, hoping he
wouldn’t just walk in and see me doing it. I wanted to give it to
him tomorrow on the plane so he could listen to it during the
flight if he wanted to.

“Are you okay?”
he asked, sounding a little concerned.

“Fine,” I
answered, chewing on my lip, watching the grey bar at the top as it
copied all of the music over.

“Anna, can I
come in?” he asked, still sounding unsure.

I ran to the
door and yanked it open before he just walked in and ruined my
surprise. “What’s up?” I asked, pulling the door close to my side
so that he couldn’t see into my room.

“Are you really
alright? You’re not freaking out because of the guns, are you?” he
asked, reaching for my hand.

I smiled at his
concern. I appreciated the thought actually. “No, I’m not freaking
out. I just had something I wanted to do on my laptop before we
leave tomorrow,” I promised, shrugging.

His face
brightened, and he seemed to visibly relax. “Oh, that’s good, I was
worried,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Thank you for
being worried, but I’m honestly fine.” I shrugged.

“Okay, well,
let me know when you’re ready.” He raised my hand to his lips,
planting a soft kiss on my knuckle before turning and walking to
his room next door.

While my laptop
finished its task, I dug out another swimsuit and shrugged out of
my clothes. By the time I had my clothes back on top of it, the
sync was finished. As I walked to his room, I scraped my hair back
into a bun before knocking politely on his door. He pulled it open
as I was mid-knock so he must have been keen to go.

“Hey, I’m
done,” I greeted.

“Okay, great,”
he smiled and stepped out of the room, slinging a towel over his
shoulder. As we stepped into the pool that we had at the back of
the house, he raised one eyebrow in appreciation. “This is nice, I
didn’t even realise this was here.”

“Yeah, I guess
I should’ve shown you this on my tour of the house, huh?” I teased,
grinning, remembering how I ditched him on his first day.

“Yeah, I still
owe you for that,” he warned, narrowing his eyes at me.

“I’m so
scared,” I mocked, stripping out of my clothes.

“You should
be.” His arms closed around me quickly, lifting me off my feet as
he stalked towards the pool.

“No!” I
shouted, just as he threw me into the water. I came up laughing and
spluttering. “Asshole!” I cried, wiping the water out of my eyes.
He did a cannonball into the pool, sending water everywhere. “Wow,
you’re such a child,” I scoffed, trying to hide my grin.

We swam a few
lengths, bantering back and forth. Ashton was a strong swimmer;
apparently they had to swim a lot for training. He said that once,
as a punishment for letting a chicken loose in the officers’
lounge, he and Nate had to spend the whole night in the pool,
swimming lengths and picking bricks up from the bottom.

“Wow, and you
liked this place?” I asked, turning my nose up.

“Sure, it kinda
saved me, I guess. When I was seventeen I didn’t get many
opportunities and I started hanging around with the wrong people.
It was a toss-up for me between joining up with the force, or
carrying on being that person who I was becoming. Thankfully I
chose the academy.”

I swam over to
him and held onto the edge so we could talk. He grabbed my waist
and pulled me to him. He was so close to me that the heat started
up again. I had no idea how he did it to me. I moved closer to him,
trailing my finger across his shoulder, looking at his tanned skin
as lustful thoughts crashed over me in droves.

“You’re looking
like a prune,” he teased, looking at my wrinkly fingers.

“You do too,” I
muttered, chewing on my lip. I knew I needed to get out of the
pool, this was just plain wrong, and I shouldn’t let this guy
affect me so much. “Maybe we should get out.” I didn’t wait for an
answer, just swam to the ladder and pulled myself out, grabbing my
towel and drying my face.

When I turned
back, he was just pulling himself out of the pool. My stomach
tightened as he picked up his towel from the chair and started
rubbing it over his chest. I watched the movements with interest;
I’d never envied a towel before that moment.

Once I could
bring myself to stop staring at him, I wrapped the towel around
myself and we started walking back through the house. At my bedroom
door, we parted ways. “I guess I should start packing after
dinner,” I mumbled, scrunching my nose up. Packing was the worst
part about being kicked out of so many schools and having to start
over.

“I can help you
if you want,” he offered. “I don’t have that much to pack. If you
have anything you want to put in with my stuff, you can.”

I smiled
gratefully. He’d already told me that he had a selection of clothes
waiting for him at the apartment. Apparently they were supplying
him with appropriate clothing; all he’d had to do was tell them his
sizes. I dreaded to think what kind of clothing they deemed
‘appropriate’ for college.

I pushed my
door open. “Okay thanks. I’ll knock for you after I get back from
dinner with my parents.” I was going to do my best to enjoy my
dinner tonight. As of tomorrow I would be leaving – and having a
chef certainly was one thing I missed while at school.

After I’d eaten
dinner with the other agents and the other staff they had at the
house, I’d packed up my own clothes before she finally knocked on
my door signalling she was finished eating with her parents. As I
lay on her bed with my arm folded behind my head, I couldn’t keep
the smile off my face. She was just so incredible. I genuinely
didn’t understand how there could be such a perfect creature like
her in the world, and yet all those terrible things had happened to
her.

My eyes were
glued to her as she bent over, folding up her clothes. I could
barely suppress my moan of desire for her. She obviously had no
idea the effect she had on me, and I was pretty grateful of that
fact. Clearly she needed a friend right now, so that was what I was
planning on being for her. I’d do whatever it took to make her
happy, even if this assignment ended up killing me. It was going to
be incredibly hard on me to be so close, yet be so far away at the
same time, but I could cope with it.

She turned and
caught me looking straight at her, so I quickly flicked my eyes
onto something else, knowing she was going to bitch me out about
it. “You want to help me instead of just watching?” she teased,
tossing a rucksack at me.

I laughed in
relief. At least she didn’t realise I was perving on her. Pushing
myself up from the bed, I turned to her art materials that she had
piled on her dresser and started putting it into the bag. When I
got to her sketchpad, I wanted so badly to look at it, but I didn’t
know if she would want me to.

“Can I look
through your drawings?” I asked hopefully.

She winced
uncomfortably. “Um, okay. Some of them are a little… harsh.”

Harsh. What
is that supposed to mean?
I sat down on the chair and started
flipping through the pad. My mouth dropped open in awe as I looked
at her drawings. They were incredible: the lake, the house, a tree,
a sunset, one of her mom. I could tell which ones she called harsh.
They were actually quite disturbing; blood, death, knives and guns.
The same man was drawn over and over, looking menacing and angry. I
recognised him from the photo in her file, this was Carter.

“These are
really great. What do you want to do when you finish school?” I
asked, pushing the book into the bag.

“Well, I always
wanted to be a graphic designer, but I’m not sure that’ll happen
now. I’ll just be happy if I can graduate and finish my course,”
she replied, looking a little sheepish.

I could feel my
anger simmering just below the surface again. Carter had taken
everything away from her. She just needed to get her confidence in
people back though, that’s all, I could help her with that. I’d do
whatever it took to get her life back on track again.

“Well, don’t
give up on your dream, Anna. I’ll help you,” I promised, looking at
her beautiful face.

She laughed
quietly, and the sound made my heart beat faster. “You sound like
Jack. He used to say things like that all the time.”

I decided to
take that as a compliment. Jack sounded like a good guy from what
I’d heard, and he was a damn lucky one too to have her love him so
much. “Smart guy,” I commented, grinning.

I turned back
to her stuff and picked up the sketch pad that she bought the other
day when we went shopping. I flipped it open and on the first page
was me again. I had to laugh at her portrayal of me. She obviously
thought I was good-looking; I could tell by the way she seemed to
skim over my flaws and drew me looking perfect, with not even a
hair out of place.

“Do you like
drawing me?” I asked, flipping the pad around so she could see what
I was looking at.

“Sure, why
not,” she replied, shrugging.

I frowned,
trying to work out what that meant. Women were incredibly hard to
read; I’d never really tried to understand one before. It was a lot
harder than it looked. I flipped to the next page – it was Jack
this time, I recognised him from the photo next to her bed. He was
covered in blood and looked like he was in pain; the picture was a
little horrifying.

I groaned and
shook my head. “Why don’t you draw a nice picture of him, instead
of this?” I asked, nodding down at the book. I didn’t want to show
her the picture in case it upset her, suddenly being confronted
with it.

She sighed, and
her eyes dropped to the floor; her whole posture was sad and
defeated. “It makes me too upset, so I don’t draw him anymore.”

“Anna, surely
it’s harder for you to draw him like this,” I protested, silently
wondering if she just liked being sad.

“You’d think
so, huh?” She took the pad out of my hand and put it in the bag,
indicating the end of the conversation.

I sighed, angry
at myself.
Way to go, Ashton, upset her again. Great job,
asshole!
I reached out and put my finger under her chin,
guiding her eyes up to meet mine. I needed to see her smile again,
I hated that she was so sad all the time. “It’s okay to miss him.
You should remember the nice times and try to forget the bad stuff.
It’s not good for you,” I whispered.