The Protector (Lone Wolf, Book 1)

The Protector

Lone Wolf, Book 1

by Bridget Essex

Synopsis:

What would you do if the woman
you loved was the one person you could never be with?

Elizabeth Grayson doesn’t want a
bodyguard.
 
She’s worked hard for her
normal life and her job as a violinist in the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra,
and the last thing she needs is a reminder of how much power her father still
has over her.
 
He’s a good enough man,
but as the founder of a booming seafood empire—with a sizable fortune to his
name—he’s a prime target for his less than ethical competitors.
 
And that means Elizabeth is a target, too.

She doesn’t quite believe her
life is in danger until the day of the “accident.”
 
But when her father hires a bodyguard for
Elizabeth, she still utterly refuses…that is, until she meets the mysterious
Layne O’Connell.
 
Sarcastic, charming
and secretive, Layne is hired to keep Elizabeth safe.
 
But protecting her heart wasn’t in the job description.

As Elizabeth’s life is threatened
again and again, a strange mystery unfolds, and it seems that even her father
is keeping secrets from her.
 
And when
Layne reveals her true nature, Elizabeth’s world is thrown upside down.

Because Elizabeth has fallen for
the one person she can’t be with:
 
the
brooding werewolf who was charged with keeping her alive.

Part heart-pounding mystery, part
epic romance, the novel
The Protector
, the first book in the Lone Wolf series, will
leave you spellbound.
 
It is
approximately 62,000 words (several days worth of reading or so).

“The
Protector”

Lone Wolf, Book 1

© Bridget Essex 2014

Rose and Star Press

First Edition

No part of this e-book may be
reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written
permission from Rose and Star Press except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in articles or reviews.
 
Please
note that piracy of copyrighted materials is illegal and directly harms the
author.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination
or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Dedication:

For the love of my
life.

And for Ruby and Marian, two of the best friends I could
ever have wished on a star for.
 
Thank
you so much for believing in me.
 
This
wolf’s for you!

Contents:

Chapter 1:
 
Close Call

Chapter 2:
 
Bodyguard

Chapter 3:
 
A Better Violin

Chapter 4:
 
Audience

Chapter 5:
 
Not Really a Date

Chapter 6:
 
The Ring

Chapter 7:
 
Knock ‘em Dead

Chapter 8:
 
Trust

Chapter 9:
 
In the Wild

Chapter
10:
 
Third Time’s the Charm

Chapter
11:
 
Instinct

Chapter 12:
 
An Invitation

Chapter
13:
 
The Choice

Acknowledgements

About
the Author

Chapter 1:
 
Close Call

It was the day of my accident that
my father hired the bodyguard.

I remember feeling the car shudder
all around me unexpectedly as the sleek black SUV hit my SMART car’s rear.
 
I’d glanced in my rearview mirror, at the
driver with the meaty, black-gloved hands on the steering wheel, the
impressive, impassive sunglasses blocking out any emotion in his eyes, his thin
lips in a tight frown as he laid into the gas pedal and slammed into me again,
so fast that if I hadn’t been watching the SUV ram into me, I never would have
thought such a big, bulky vehicle could move so quickly.

I don’t remember much after that
except spinning and spinning, my head whipped against the unyielding window so
hard that I saw stars and then darkness.
 
And then there was this gigantic, metallic
crunch
that I’ll
probably be hearing in my nightmares for the rest of my life.

When I woke up in the hospital, my
father was hovering over me.
 
Alexander
Grayson, a staggeringly tall and usually intimidating (well, to anyone but me)
man doesn’t
hover
.
 
But he was
that day, his handsome face contorted in a grimace of pain as he stared down at
me, brown eyes wide and actually
tear-filled
.
 
He was wearing his usual designer suit because he’d probably come
right from the office, and his shoulder-length salt and pepper hair was swept
back in a loose ponytail.
 
I teased him
about that ponytail all the time, which I think just made him wear it
more.
 
His eyes glittered as he took a
quavering breath, and then I exhaled with a sigh, blinking as my eyes adjusted,
and the boring white tiled hospital ceiling came into focus.

“Hi, Dad,” I croaked, then
immediately wished I hadn’t spoken as my sides squeezed and my lungs ached like
I’d inhaled a gallon of glass shards.
 
Everything hurt like a
sonofabitch
.

“Elizabeth?”
 
My dad seemed to crumple as he kneeled on
one knee beside me, and then my father was
really
crying, bright,
shining tears that snaked their way down the smooth skin of his face, getting
caught in his trim mustache and tiny beard that—he insisted, much to my
chagrin—made him look handsome.
 
“God, I
thought this was it, sweetheart—I thought you were going to…going to…”
 
He trailed off, sinking down to both knees
by the side of the bed and gripping my hand so tightly, I wondered if he’d
bruise my fingers.
 
His eyes were
fierce, flashing with a light I rarely saw in them, then, almost a red
shimmer.
 
He growled,
uncharacteristically low and savage:
 
“I’m going to
get
those
fuckers
who did this to you.”

I might have a dirty mouth, but I
hate to tell you this:
 
I most certainly
inherited it from my mother.
 
I don’t
think my father would cuss out a
mass murderer
.
 
To the best of my knowledge, I was pretty
certain I’d never heard him use an expletive in my entire
life.

He…wasn’t really acting normal.

I sat up, then, which might not
have been the best idea.
 
My head spun
like a very sadistic carnival ride that won’t let you off, complete with
flashing lights and stars sharpening their points on the corners of my
vision.
 
I blinked, tried to
swallow.
 
“Dad, it’s okay—please don’t
worry.
 
I’m fine,” I lied to him,
swinging my bare legs out from under the hospital sheet and over the edge of
the bed.
 
In the background, machines
began to beep in warning, obnoxious bursts of electronic protest, but I pushed
myself up and stood anyway, trying to prove the point to him that I was “fine.”

My father had leapt up the moment I
did, and was steadying me with a strong hand at my elbow, but even though he
gripped me tightly, it’s mostly because I’m stubborn beyond belief that the
floor didn’t rush up to meet me.
 
I ran
a hand that was hooked up to an IV through my dirty blonde hair.
 
It was down and around my shoulders,
sweeping against my back in long, lank strands, and I was wishing I could find
a ponytail holder somewhere.
 
That was
the last thought I had before black dots started poking around the edge of my
vision, beginning to swarm.

Even I knew when I was overdoing
it.

“So how cutthroat is that seafood
business getting?” I joked weakly as I sat back down on the bed.
 
I’d done enough for the moment.
 
I slowly became aware that I was only wearing
one of those incredibly sexy (hah!) hospital gowns the color of bad milk, and I
absent-mindedly threw the scratchy, starched sheet of the hospital bed over my
shoulders, drawing it close.
 
“Dad, that
guy who rear-ended me…I think he purposefully rammed me,” I told my father,
searching his eyes.
 

Again, something dangerous
glittered behind his dark brown irises, but he schooled his features, adopting
his usual indulgent grin that he always got when he was about to do something
that would make me furious.
 
Like, you
know, the time that he told me I couldn’t go to college across the country
because I’d “be in danger” from “everything.”

My father has always been too
overprotective, never with any sort of
reason
.
 
And it’s not as if I’ve not proven I can take care of myself.
 
I’m a tough lady, but I never seemed tough
enough to face all of the dangers my father supposed were in the world and out
to get me.

I guess he maybe had a tiny point,
however, since my car had just been rammed by a stranger for no apparent
reason.

“Did they catch the guy?” I asked
after a long moment, when my father said nothing, his jaw flexing as he pivoted
back on his heels and stared up at the ceiling.

“Elizabeth, sweetheart,” said Dad,
shifting from foot to foot then.
 
He was
so terrible at delivering bad news with his sad frown, and his tiny mustache
drooping a little to go along with the frown.

“Dad, I can handle it,” I promised
him, softening my voice as I drew the sheet closer.
 
“If the cops didn’t catch the guy, I’m sure they will.
 
He’s not dead, is he?” I asked, then, cold
moving over my skin in waves that gave me goosebumps.
 
Yeah, the guy had rammed me, but I didn’t want him to be
dead
.
 
I didn’t remember what had happened after
the second ramming.
 
Maybe his SUV had
flown off the freeway into a guardrail, or…

“Sweetheart, I think it’s important
to start at the beginning.”
 
He cleared
his throat, throwing out his hands impressively, as if he was on a stage or
behind a podium.
 
“As you well know,
Grayson Seafood is the envy of the world,” said my father then, and I sat back
with raised eyebrows.
 
He was taking the
long-winded approach, using his very particular voice that he always rolled out
at company holiday parties when he had to make a speech about how
great
the past year had been for the bottom line.
 
And the fishermen and warehouse workers and packers who worked for my
dad were usually wasted at that point—as would anyone be at a work holiday
party with a very generous catered banquet and open bar—and would cheer him
through his dangerously long-winded speech about how Grayson Seafood was to be
envied, and they were the biggest packers of seafood in the
world
and
people across the globe were eating our fish every night, and…you get the
picture.
 
Boring, feel-good stuff that
would be applauded at the end as more booze was consumed in celebration at the
amazing year they’d had.

But I’d just been in a
car
accident
.
 
And as the daughter of
the founder of Grayson Seafood, I was well acquainted with just how envied the
family business was.
 
A little
too
well
acquainted, considering how many of my father’s speeches I’d had to suffer
through in my lifetime.
 

“Dad, what happened to the
driver
?”
I asked pointedly.
 
He frowned a little
with a sigh—he’d just been getting started, and if there’s anything my father
loves, it’s a good speech—but then his lips tightened.

“Well, to put it plainly, the
overseas fishing moguls have it out for us, sweetheart,” he said with a frown,
spreading his hands.
 
“They’re targeting
me, and since you’re my only family, they’re targeting
you
.”

My father was a bit of a conspiracy
theorist, the kind who didn’t believe we’d actually landed on the moon, that
the assassination of JFK was some sort of government murder, and that there
have been a ton of UFO landings that the feds don’t want us to know about.
 
But this was pushing the envelope a bit,
even for him.
 

“Since when is the seafood business
as bad as the mob?” I chuckled, trying to turn it into a joke.
 
I grimaced as I shifted my weight and then
wished I hadn’t.
 
My
tailbone
was
sore—how had that even happened?
 
I
sighed and leaned back on my wrists, staring up at my father with a
long-suffering expression.
 

He took this as license to continue
his speech.

“The seafood business has a long
and illustrious history of being just as cutthroat as—” began my father, but
then he saw the look on my face.
 
He
swallowed and shook his head.
 
“Sweetheart, you know that we turned profits last year that were almost
double
every other seafood company in the
world
.”

“Dad, I love you—but I hate to
remind you that
I’m
not in the seafood business.
 
So why would these supposed ‘overseas
fishing moguls,’” I sighed and made air quotes, “be targeting me?
 
Frankly, why would they be targeting
anyone
at all
?
 
These aren’t perfect
diamonds or everlasting oil wells—they’re profits made from bulgy-eyed tuna and
swordfish,” I told him with a shake of my head.
 
I glanced at the wall clock over his shoulder and felt the icy
fingers of dread choke me a little.
 
“Crap, Dad—we have to finish this later.
 
I’m late for practice!”
 
I
struggled to stand again, even as the black points began to swarm at the edges
of my vision.
 
“And if I’m late again,
Amelia is going to kill me, and I did just totally survive a near-death
experience, so I don’t want another
quite
so soon,” I told him with as
much of a straight face as I could muster.
 

My coping skills consist of sarcasm
and humor.
 
And that’s pretty much
it.
 
Which is probably why I’ve never
been able to have a completely serious conversation with a girlfriend to save
my life.

Which is
probably
why I’m
single.

“Honey, you’re not letting me
explain
…”
 
My father looked like he was in actual pain
as he held out his hands to me with a grimace, waving them to get me to lay
back down on the hospital bed.
 
“Someone
tried to actually
kill
you today.
 
I really don’t think you’re understanding the gravity of the situation,
and you’re really not reacting like—”