Preview

Stasia kept her hand on the door as if that would keep the stupid, meddling, attractive bodyguard from busting through.

She should have known he was coming. Her father and her brother had let this whole situation drop way too easily last night. After a few hours at the police station where she'd given a report and done her best to guide the detectives toward an explanation for what had happened, she'd been able to go home and pretend that everything was going to be okay. She'd even allowed her father to leave a security detail outside of her building overnight.

Just in case something went wrong.

That had been a mistake. She should have known her father wouldn't stop there.

Owen Myers didn't look like any of the guards that her father normally hired. He wasn't even wearing a suit. And the smile he flashed her—white teeth, laugh lines, kissable lips, and warm, tanned skin—was enough to make her stomach flutter.

Not that she would ever let him know that.

He was too hot for his own good and no doubt he knew it. He was too hot for her own good too. Just looking at him made her think of sultry nights and humid air.

She couldn't remember ever having inappropriate feelings for a bodyguard before, and she wasn't about to start now. She didn't need a bodyguard. Sure, maybe she had almost been snatched off the street in broad daylight. That wasn't ideal. But that was her father's bullshit. It had nothing to do with her, and she wasn't about to start getting involved in whatever nonsense the Selby Group was cooking up.

She didn't work for her father's company.

She didn't live in his house.

She didn't have to deal with his edicts anymore.

A hollow knock echoed right beside her ear. "Ms. Nichols, please let me in." All that was bodyguard voice. Cold and commanding, the kind that was supposed to make her want to jump to attention. Stasia hated that a part of her wanted to shiver and obey.

But it was only a small part, and she didn't give in that easy. "It's doctor." She'd worked long and hard for that degree and she wasn't about to let anybody forget about it.

"Dr. Nichols," he corrected. "Please let me in."

"No." This was ridiculous. She was yelling at a bodyguard through her own closed door like she needed to bargain to make him go away. He wasn't getting into the room without forcing his way in, and if he tried he would be fired before he could get past the first lock.

Her father had some nerve. She'd allowed the detail to follow her because it seemed logical. But she did not need a bulldog watching her every step. Who did this guy think he was?

And what kind of bodyguard looked like he had walked right off a runway somewhere?

He was almost a full head taller than her, definitely a couple inches over six feet. He had short dark hair and soulful brown eyes lined with just enough laugh lines to make him look sweet and gentle… and oh so sexy. He had the kind of even tan that only came naturally, and even though he was covered from head to toe, she could tell there were muscles rippling just below the surface. He wasn't the kind of guy she normally found herself attracted to.

Mostly because he was the kind of guy that only existed in pornographic fantasies.

There were plenty of hot doctors around, and hot lawyers, and hot stockbrokers, and hot baristas. But none of them held a candle to this Owen guy.

It was too bad she had to ruin his life. Okay, that was probably a bit of an exaggeration. She just wanted to get him fired, she didn't care about the rest of his life.

She wasn't going to let him come in to boss her around and babysit her.

She didn't need it.

She didn't want it.

She wasn't going to have it.

He knocked on the door again, but he didn't say anything this time. Stasia stared at the white wood for a long moment before pushing off and heading deeper into her condo. Let him stew. She didn't owe him anything. Eventually he would realize that she wasn't listening.

And luckily she didn’t have a neighbor, so even if he decided to wait outside her front door all day no one would be there to question his presence. She didn't really care if the neighbors started to gossip, but she had decades of media training that made her shy away from the spotlight unless she was using it to her advantage.

No one could break into her apartment to kidnap her if he was standing right outside the door.

She hated that she even thought it. She hated that a small part of her wanted to let him inside to take care of all of her problems and guard her until whatever problem her father had caused in her life was fixed by her father's money.

But she'd learned a long time ago that letting her father dictate any aspect of her life led to him dictating every aspect.

It started small, logical. Someone tried to kidnap her so he offered personal protection. If they couldn't catch the guy, he would say she should move into his penthouse since it was more secure than her building. Was that true? Sure. But she'd sacrifice a lot of personal security to stay out from under her father's thumb.

She didn't have a job at the hospital anymore, and he had plenty of contacts who would be happy to hire her. And just like that, she would be wrapped up in a web of favors and responsibilities that she could never escape.

She knew who her father was. He didn't love like a normal person. Some thought he was completely incapable of the emotion, but she knew it was more complex than that. To him, love was transactional. None of his wives had ever lived up to the concept, and she and her nine siblings fell in and out of favor depending on his moods and their usefulness. Well, maybe the baby got a pass. For now.

In another life, he would have been a king or a lord, dictating his will and whims out on the world. He didn't have a title, but he still used his wealth in the exact same way.

She was free of him now, more or less. And she couldn't let this be another setback. It had taken nearly two years to climb her way out of the last setback that put her in her father's clutches. She didn't want to start all over again.

Even if starting over was exactly what she was doing right now. But at least it had nothing to do with her father.

She picked her phone up from the kitchen counter and tried her father's number. She wasn't surprised when he didn't pick up and she was immediately forwarded to his assistant's answering service. She hung up before leaving a message. If he wanted to talk he would have picked up.

Then she tried AR. If her father couldn't be reached, her oldest brother was almost as good. He was their father's right-hand man and heir. He did the family dirty work.

But AR didn't answer either.

Stasia cursed and set the phone back down. She hated the games her family played. No doubt her father and AR were busy. They would be able to give her a dozen convenient and logical reasons why they couldn't answer her calls.

But in reality, they weren't answering because they thought if they ignored her for long enough she would give up and accept that Owen was going to be her shadow until they decided she was safe.

Safe.

She didn't think she could ever truly be safe as long as she was the daughter of Armand Selby. And short of time travel, there wasn't a way to untie that knot.

Owen knocked on the door again, an unwelcome reminder of all of the control that her father tried to wield over her.

She ignored him and instead consulted the calendar app on her phone to see what she had to do today. She'd been trying to keep herself busy in the couple weeks since she had left her previous job and she was happy to see that she had a volunteer shift coming up.

She eyed the window in her sitting room that looked out over Gramercy Park. If her apartment was just a few stories lower, she would have been happy to sneak out and lose the guard dog. But she had stopped playing games with security details when she was a teenager. She was a thirty-four-year-old adult woman now.

If she didn't want to be followed, she would just have to lose him the old-fashioned way.