Guarded Desires (3 page)

The compliment lashed over Liev like a hot caress. He ground his teeth, willing the tight throb in his groin to go away. “Rhodes has a way with words.”

Chris chuckled. “Damn straight. Last week he told me I was a big girl’s blouse when I needed to take a break during training.” He frowned. “I still don’t really know what that means.”

“It means you didn’t
need
to take a break.” Bethany appeared at Liev’s side to hand him a small brushed-steel cup on a matching saucer. “That you could have trained harder and longer.”

Chris raised his eyebrows. “How do you know that, Bethany?”

She gave her boss a steady look. “I know everything.”

Without a word, she turned and walked away, but not before Liev noticed a tiny smile pull at the edges of her mouth.

His gut clenched. Little Miss Efficiency had a naughty streak. Crap, he didn’t need to know that.

“She does, it seems.” Chris let out a melodramatic sigh. “And I suspect she reports to my sister on the hour. Which means Rowie knows everything as well. And here I was thinking I’d get to run amuck in Australia this time. Party hard. Maybe even get laid.”

Liev choked on his espresso.

Chris laughed. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to do that to you. And I’m not planning on getting laid. Haven’t got time for that, do I, Bethany?”

Bethany reappeared at Liev’s side, placing a platter piled high with fresh fruit, cheese and water crackers on the coffee table. “It’s not in your schedule, Mr. Huntley.”

“See?” Chris slumped back in the sofa, his face a mask of dramatic dismay. “No time for fun. Guess it’s just the three of us for the next seven days. Can you deal with that, Liev?”

A hot lump filled Liev’s throat. He shifted in the armchair, the crotch of his jeans uncomfortably tight. His stupid brain was presenting all sorts of options for the three of them for the next seven days. None of them remotely professional. “I can deal with that.”

“Good.” Chris reached forward and snagged a hunk of brie from the platter between them. Liev couldn’t help but notice the way the muscles in his arm and shoulder coiled and flexed with the movement. Rhodes had told Liev the actor was working out hard. It was obvious. Bloody obvious.

“Four, Mr. Huntley.”

Liev blinked at Bethany’s obscure statement.

Chris frowned. “Four what?”

“There will be four of us,” Bethany corrected. “Jeff Coulter arrives tomorrow.”

Chris smacked his palm to his forehead. “Shit, that’s right.” He pulled a face. “Damn, don’t let Jeff know I forgot him.”

Bethany’s lips twisted into another ambiguous smile. “Not at all, sir. Would you like me to retrieve your overnight bag from the yacht, Liev?”

It was Liev’s turn to frown. “Overnight bag?”

“You do realize part of your role as Mr. Huntley’s personal bodyguard while he is here in Australia requires you to stay in his presence twenty-four seven?”

Liev swallowed. “Umm.”

Bethany cocked a straight auburn eyebrow. “Is this a problem?”

Liev’s gut knotted. “No. I just…wasn’t…”

The actor’s personal assistant frowned. “I’m sorry. I think this may be my fault. I’m sure I mentioned it to you when we last spoke on the telephone.”

“No.” Liev shook his head. “It’s news to me. But not a problem.”

“Are you sure?” Bethany flicked a quick look at her boss. “I’m certain another bodyguard could be—”

“No,” Liev interrupted, shaking his head again. “It’s all good. I’ll just whip home and grab some stuff.”

“Excellent.” Bethany’s answering smile was stunning. If Liev wasn’t already so unsettled by his sexual attraction to the American actor sitting opposite him, he’d be floored by the young woman standing beside him. Come to think it, his horny bloody brain had already tried to create a debauched fantasy involving all three of them.

“I shall arrange a taxi to meet you at Circular Key to drive you home. Is that okay?”

“Perfect.” It would be easier for the taxi to collect him from where he was now, but Liev didn’t want too many people knowing the location. And with Chris being in town, the paparazzi were out in force. Images of Chris arriving at the airport had appeared online already. Liev had scanned the celebrity gossip sites during the yacht trip across the harbour, noting more than one image of the actor in the airport terminal was attributed to the infamous Australian paparazzo, Carl Holston. Rhodes had pre-warned him Holston would be a nuisance.

Paparazzi weren’t something Liev had had to deal with guarding politicians. It was only the odd job he had taken protecting Nick Blackthorne with Aslin that had exposed him to their particular kind of scum. And in Australia, Holston was the king shit of them—

“Chris!”

The scream came from beyond the open doors. High, wild and female.

“We love you Chris!”

Liev was on his feet before the shout finished. He crossed to the balcony, Bethany in tow.

Outside, bobbing up and down on the water at the end of the jetty was a water-taxi. Standing at the stern, dressed in little bikini-tops and miniskirts, were four young women.

All four squealed as Liev stepped out of the living area, one of them waving a sign with a mobile phone number scrawled in what looked like pink lipstick beneath the words
Call me, Chris. I’m yours.

“So it’s begun,” Bethany murmured at his elbow.

Liev cast her a sideways glance. A scowl pulled at her lips and eyebrows as she fixed her stare on the giggling women.

Swinging back to the water-taxi, Liev withdrew his mobile from his back pocket and dialed a number.

The woman with the sign let out a screech. She gaped at her friends. Her friends gaped back. The one closest to her snatched the sign from her hand and said something to her. All four of them stared at Liev and Bethany as the woman pulled a mobile from the small purse hanging over her shoulder and raised it to her ear. “Hi? Chris?”

“G’day, love,” Liev said, watching the woman’s face. “I suggest you tell the driver of the taxi to take you as far away from here as he can. Now. Before I—”

The woman hung up. Liev saw her do it before he heard the connection between them cut.

“Boo,”
one of the women called across the distance.

“
Spoil sport
,”
another shouted.

However the young woman whose number he’d called had scurried off the stern and was now talking to the driver of the water-taxi.

There was a delay—no longer than a few seconds—and then the small motorboat pulled away from the end of the jetty, taking the booing, giggling, waving young women with it.

Liev dialed another number on his mobile, watching the small watercraft as it skimmed across the calm waves.

“Skippy’s Water Taxi,” a voice said.

“G’day, mate,” Liev answered. “Can I speak to the boss, please?”

Forty-five minutes later, Liev tucked his mobile back into his jeans’ pocket. Every water-taxi service in Sydney had been notified no fares to Chris’s location were to be accepted without approval of Liev Reynolds or Bethany Sloan. It had cost Liev a small percentage of his income for the job to grease the palms of all the owners, but it was worth it. At least that was one thing crossed off the list. While in a phoning mood, he called the water police and negotiated a five-hundred metre no-go-zone around the jetty. After that, he called his contacts in the local police command base, letting them know he was Chris Huntley’s official bodyguard during the actor’s stay in Australia. One asked Liev to get his daughter Chris’s autograph. The other laughed and told Liev he was a lucky bastard and did he want to swap jobs for seven days.

He was still grinning about the question when he turned back to the living area to find Bethany and Chris looking at him.

He froze.

Oh boy.

Bethany—the bundle of poised control and efficiency—was studying him with open approval, her arms folded across her breasts, her lips twisted in that same smile she’d worn earlier. If Liev didn’t know any better, he’d think there was a gleam of interest in her eyes. But he
did
know better. Rhodes had filled him in on Bethany Sloan. She was utterly professional, utterly no-nonsense and completely straight-laced.

Which made it safe for him to include her in his sexual fantasies with Chris.

Chris.

An invisible clamp wrapped around Liev’s chest. His breath grew thick.

He slid his stare to the actor standing at Bethany’s side, one-hundred percent certain what he’d first thought he’d seen on Chris’s face when turning back to the living room wouldn’t be there.

It couldn’t be.

It was just a trick of the light. It had to be.

Looking at the actor, Liev bit back a strangled groan.

Because it
was
still there. On the American’s face. Subtle and almost masked by the relaxed grin Chris was famous for. Almost but not quite.

Desire.

Curious, confused desire.

Liev’s stomach lurched. His groin grew tight.

Crap. What was meant to be an easy seven-day job looked like it was well on its way to becoming something else altogether. Something far more bloody conflicted and complicated.

Liev didn’t do conflicted and complicated.

Liev did simple.

But there was nothing simple about the way Chris Huntley was looking at him. Nothing.

And there was nothing simple about the way Liev’s body was responding to that look.

Nothing at all.

Crap. Crap. Crap.

Chapter Three

The man was naked and dripping wet. Chris knew this for a fact because he’d heard Reynolds start the shower attached to the third bedroom only a few minutes ago.

He bunched his jaw, wriggled deeper into the sofa and switched on the large flat-screen television mounted on the wall beside him. He needed a distraction.

Of all things, an episode of
Twice Too Many
came on. The one from the first season where Will Abbott, the OCD lawyer Chris portrayed, lost a bet to his best friend and had to do a pole dancing routine at the
America’s Got Talent
auditions.

He studied the screen, watching his younger self slide up and down the pole with hopeless hilarity to the sounds of canned laughter.

It wasn’t working. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t keep his mind on the ridiculous situation the writers of the episode had concocted. It kept wandering back to the Australian currently naked a mere forty or so feet away.

Chris had hoped the three and a half hours Liev Reynolds had taken to retrieve an overnight bag from his home would be enough time for his strange reaction to the man to disappear.

It hadn’t.

When Liev arrived back at the waterfront mansion, an overnight bag in hand, Chris had found himself just as unsettled and disturbed as before.

He didn’t understand it.

Added to that was the way Bethany kept looking at him, her gaze contemplative. He’d wanted to ask what she was thinking about, but for some stupid reason he didn’t dare.

Which also made no sense.

Goddamn it, maybe he needed to jump on the next flight back to L.A.? He didn’t have any of these problems back home. The worst he had to deal with was his sister watching his diet like a hawk and Aslin making him work out every day at six a.m., whether he wanted to or not. None of this why-am-I-thinking-about-a-guy-naked confusion. None of this damn-my-P.A.-is-hot crap either.

Pointing the remote control at the television, he flicked through the channels, done with his oil-slicked, scenery-chewing self on the screen. Nothing caught his attention and finally he gave up, killing the power to the device and tossing the remote aside.

He shoved himself from the sofa and wandered out onto the balcony, the cool breeze blowing up from the harbour playing with his hair as he leant on the railing.

Perhaps he’d always been this way? He’d never really had any kind of long-term relationship with a woman. He enjoyed sleeping with them. Hell, he loved boobs. He could play with a woman’s boobs for hours on end if allowed, but he never really felt connected with any of the women he’d dated on an emotional level. Rowan had put it down to the fact he’d only dated other actresses and celebrities since finding fame. She’d encouraged him to try branching out, had even tried to set him up once with a young woman she’d taught karate. Then, when Aslin had come along, his sister and brother-in-law had taken it in turns introducing him to all sorts of women from different walks of life.

None had piqued his interest. They’d all been lovely and friendly and down-to-earth, a trait Rowan deemed vital for any future sister-in-law it seemed, but none…grabbed him.

Like the way Liev Reynolds grabbed you?

Chris’s stomach rolled and, before he could stop himself, he cast a quick look over his shoulder in the direction of the third bedroom and its en suite.

The closest he’d ever come to being
grabbed
that way by a guy was the time he and his co-star had been working out together in preparation for their film,
Dead Even
. Chris hadn’t been able to stop watching the other actor’s pecs as he performed a set of dips. The way the famous action star’s muscles coiled and flexed had been almost hypnotic.