America's Playboy Heir Was Untouched, Until His Bodyguard Broke the Rules novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Lunch Is a Riot
A hand drags Averett over a table at Marlo's, a new bodyguard puts the man on the floor, and Averett refuses to let Quarles swap him out.
A hand closed on Averett's wrist and pulled.
He went across the table, over a basket of bread and a glass of water, and a dozen phones came up to film it.
The man holding him was grinning and shouting his name.
Marlo's was packed to the walls, and every person in it wanted a piece of the Kingsbury heir before dessert.
"Averett! Averett, over here!"
Another hand got into his hair, and a third tore at his sleeve.
His two security men were pinned behind the host stand, shouting into their collars.
Then a body hit the man from the side, and the grip on Averett's wrist broke.
The man went down on the tile with a forearm across his throat and a knee in his back.
Above him stood someone Averett had never seen.
He was huge, in a plain gray henley, with a black-and-gray tattoo running from his knuckles to his rolled sleeve.
His nose had been broken at least twice.
He did not look at the crowd.
He looked at Averett, checking his face, his hands, his collar.
"Are you hurt?"
"No," Averett said.
"Then walk behind me, and don't stop."
He did not wait for an answer.
He took Averett by the shoulder and steered him through the kitchen doors.
Steam, shouting cooks, a rack of plates, an alley door.
A black SUV was already idling in the alley with the back door open.
The stranger put his hand on top of Averett's head and folded him into the seat.
Then he climbed in beside him and slammed the door on the noise.
For a moment there was only the sound of the two of them breathing.
"Who are you?" Averett said.
"Sobel. Jarek Sobel. I start tomorrow."
"It's four in the afternoon," Averett said.
"I was early."
He said it flatly, and he was already scanning the mirrors.
His right hand lay open on his knee.
The knuckles were split, and blood ran down into the black ink of his wrist.
Averett looked at it for a long moment.
Four years of bodyguards, and none of them had ever bled for him.
They had stood in doorways and said please step back, sir.
He took the hand in both of his before he had decided to.
The skin was hot and rough, and the pulse under his thumb was slow and steady.
Jarek went completely still.
"Don't."
"You're bleeding all over my car."
"It's the company's car," Jarek said.
"It's my father's company. Hold still."
Averett pressed a folded napkin against the cuts.
Jarek let him, which seemed to cost him something.
His eyes dropped to Averett's mouth, and then jerked away.
The back door of the SUV opened again.
Anson Quarles, the head of the Kingsbury security team, climbed in with his earpiece askew and his face the color of putty.
He was fifty-two, ex-Secret Service, and he had never once raised his voice in front of Averett.
He raised it now.
"Sobel! You were told to report at nine tomorrow, in uniform, and sit in the van!"
"There was a crowd, Mr. Quarles," Jarek said.
"There is always a crowd!"
"He was going over the table."
Quarles breathed through his nose.
"This is exactly what the file said you would do. You break protocol, you break a civilian, you put us in the papers."
"He put his hands on a principal," Jarek said.
"Mr. Kingsbury, I apologize for this. I'm moving you to the day team tonight. They are quiet, and they go by the book."
"No."
Averett had not let go of the hand.
Quarles blinked at him.
"Sir, with respect, the man is a liability," Quarles said.
"The man took a stranger's hand off my wrist while your day team was stuck behind a host stand. They stay on the day shift."
"Sir..." Quarles began.
"I'm not asking, Mr. Quarles.
If you swap him, I walk out of the Tower tomorrow with no detail at all.
You can explain that to my father."
Quarles stared at him, and then at Jarek, and then at the hand.
"Fine," he said at last. "Then hear the rule, Sobel, because I will only say it once."
He tapped his earpiece, and his voice turned to ice.
"No flirting. No dating. No intimate contact, none, not once.
You touch him only when the job requires it.
One breach, and you are fired, and I make sure no firm in this country hires you again."
"Yes, sir."
"Say it back."
Jarek's eyes were on Averett's mouth again, and this time they stayed there.
"Copy," he said.
Averett looked down at the bloody napkin and then up into the hard gray eyes that had not moved from him.
"Liar," he said quietly.
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