Model Bodyguard (Haven Investigations Book 2)

  Model Bodyguard

  By Lissa Kasey

  Sequel to Model Citizen

  Haven Investigations: Book Two

  Things are going well for androgynous model Ollie Petroskovic, ex-Marine Kade Alme, and their business, Haven Investigations, until rock star Jacob Elias shows up in need of their services… and trouble follows.

  Jacob is a playboy with a serious penchant for kink, slaves, and sex toys. He’s also Ollie’s ex—and all that implies. With the media exploiting his personal life, a stalker sending blood-soaked “gifts,” a bumbling security team, and a family he can’t trust as far as he could throw them, Jacob is in desperate need of a bodyguard for his latest tour, and Kade can’t refuse.

  While Kade deals with new doubts about his partnership with Ollie and struggles with reminders of his war injuries, Jacob’s stalker escalates from blackmail and threats to murder. As Kade and Ollie work to keep Jacob safe and find the culprit behind the attack, a web of family secrets, lies, and abuse slowly emerges, leading up to a final confrontation that they might not walk away from—and that will have lasting repercussions for Kade and his relationship with Ollie.

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  More from Lissa Kasey

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  About the Author

  By Lissa Kasey

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  Copyright Page

  For all those who groaned over the teaser at the end of Model Citizen for being a cliffhanger. This is a cliffhanger.

  Prologue

  “I FEEL different sizes today,” I remarked to Nathan, who sat beside my bed.

  “You look the same size,” he replied.

  But I felt different in my skin. Always light-headed and floating with pain just on the edge of my reality. “I’m not quite sure who I am either. I’ve become Alice.”

  “You’re not Alice. You’re the Mad Hatter.”

  I frowned at him, though it made sense somehow. “Am I mad?”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  I stared at him, thinking hard. He was fuzzy around the edges, but still solid in the center. His dark blond hair was brushed back from his face, shoulders and chest thick in a snug T-shirt, and eyes just a little more green than I remembered. Ollie had eyes like Nathan. Or maybe Nathan had eyes like Ollie. I couldn’t think deeply enough to know for sure or why it even mattered.

  “I don’t want to be mad,” I told him. “Can I go home?” The bland gray walls and giant windowless room made my heart ache. I missed my days sleeping on Nathan’s couch, reading stories to Ollie, or making them meals. I couldn’t remember why I was in the hospital, but I felt okay, other than floaty. They should let me go home. “I’m not sick, am I?”

  “We’re all a little sick,” was all he said. “Should I read to you awhile longer?”

  But that wasn’t right. Nathan never read to me. Nathan hated reading. Even to Ollie. The task had fallen to me because the rapt attention and joy on Ollie’s face had always made my day. “Where’s Ollie?” I had to know. Something was odd about Nathan being here and Ollie not.

  “You’ll need to take care of him now.”

  The words warmed my heart, but also confused me. I could vaguely recall a fight in which Nathan had specifically told me to stay away from his little brother. Now he wanted me to take care of him like he was going somewhere. “Are you leaving? Stay, please. It’s so lonely here.” And I wasn’t crazy. Not like they thought I was.

  Nathan’s smile was tense, but he didn’t speak.

  “Is Ollie here?” I wanted to know, because rarely were they apart. Something tickled the back of my brain in memory of a news article and a big breakup. Some guy had treated him bad. “He needs friends now. I get it.” That made so much more sense. “I think I’m still a little out of it. Is that because I’m sick?”

  “You said you were changing sizes. I’m sure they’re working to fix that.”

  That too made sense, in a weird, disjointed way. “I’m on some pretty good drugs, yeah?”

  “Yes.”

  I tried to reach for his hand, which rested on the bed beside me, but met with resistance in lifting it. Just how badly was I injured? I tried with the other arm but couldn’t raise that one either. “Nathan?” I asked, unable to keep the worry from my voice. It was then I remembered the explosion: heat and pain. Had I lost both arms? Maybe all my limbs? I couldn’t see my body. Just the white of the blanket and everything else was like wool wrapped around my brain. Too much focus and the pain began to edge back in. I swallowed back the panic. “Nathan?” I pleaded, unsure what exactly I was asking for.

  Only he was gone. I blinked away tears, and swung my head side to side to try to find Nathan in the room. There was a nurse beside my equipment, and my father stood at the end of the bed. His dark eyes glared at me, anger stretched across his face, his hands clenched in fists. When I’d been younger, I’d never thought it was odd that we looked nothing alike. I had my mother’s pale brown, almost blond, hair—with a tight and coarse curl that had to come from my father’s side—brown eyes and ivory skin. Years serving under the scorching sun had covered me in freckles and tans that quickly faded. My father was a dark-skinned black man with a shaved and shining head. His eyes were dark and always grim. I couldn’t recall ever seeing him smile at me, or even look in my direction with kindness. Not like he did my siblings.

  He threw a newspaper down on my chest. “Your boyfriend’s dead,” he told me. “This all stops here.”

  Boyfriend? I didn’t have one. Dead? What stops here? I was too fuzzy. The confusion on my face must have been obvious because he stalked to the head of the bed, picked up the paper, and tilted it to show me the picture. An obituary. For Nathan.

  “No,” I denied, tried to reach for the paper to tear it to shreds, but my arms were bound. I was strapped to the bed in leather cuffs. I struggled against them. “Let me go. He’s not dead, damn you. Let me go! I need to see him. He was just here.”

  “No more, Kade. This endless rebellion of yours is over. Your military career is over. I let you stay because I thought it would make you a man. I was wrong. So we’ll just have to do it another way.” My father nodded to the nurse who picked up a needle off a tray.

  “No! Let me go.” Tears welled up in my eyes and my chest hurt. He couldn’t be gone. He was just here. He’d been talking to me. And if Nathan was gone, who would take care of Ollie? Oh my God. Ollie. The drugs began to yank me back down into a floating haze. I didn’t want to be here, but was powerless to move. Without Nathan how would I get free? Who would care for Ollie? Who would remind me that I was more than ju
st a toy soldier for the world to manipulate?

  Darkness closed in and once again I was small and helpless.

  Chapter One

  A year and a half later

  THE WORST memories weren’t really from the bomb. I barely remember that day. Just the time in the transport, joking with the guys, keeping an eye on the road, then fire and darkness. I never really saw the others die. One of the things I remembered was waking briefly in pain and confusion, hearing screams, and wondering why I didn’t hurt more. The heat beat down on me as I breathed in ash and gore, and I thought for sure I was gonna die. No chance for Nathan to tell me he told me so. I’d been itching for death for years, right?

  Only now I didn’t want it. I imagined lying in the burning sun, surrounded by desert and pieces of my dead comrades, thinking anything other than how much I wanted to live and how stupid I was to have been there to begin with. But I was only awake a few minutes or so. The rat-tat-tat of gunfire echoed in the distance as I plummeted back into darkness.

  The next time I awoke was in a field hospital. Even that was a brief mash of pain and too-bright lights. People shouted in several languages, none of which I recognized. I had a moment of terror fill my gut at the thought I might have been taken prisoner.

  Something wrenched my hip hard, sending white-hot pain through my entire right side. Then the darkness took me back. The days after passed much the same: in and out of consciousness. I learned I was safe and that most of my team had died in the blast. I heard talk of losing a leg, maybe even half my arm, but wasn’t coherent enough to really understand what they were saying. That I’d woken more than a week and a half later stateside and whole was a surprise.

  My dad standing over me with an expression of grim determination on his face was almost worse than the memory of lying in the blazing sun amidst the gore of my fallen brethren. The fact that I was strapped to the bed and the surrounding walls were painted a pale gray told me all I needed to know about the situation. This was the stuff of nightmares—a mental hospital.

  It wasn’t my first trip. No, they’d put me there the first time at age eleven. I barely recalled that trip. The first of many that would arise until I escaped into the military six years later. But I was nowhere near well enough this time to escape like I had the last time. Nor did I have anywhere to go. Hell, I wasn’t sure if all my limbs were still where they were supposed to be or if when I took off the bandages I’d find only stumps.

  Sometimes I still had nightmares about those weeks before Will came to free me. Not about the bomb, or even the faces of the hundreds of soldiers I’d met in my life—though the guys showed up sometimes after a particularly psychedelic drug combo had been forced on me. Oh the conversations the crazy could have with the dead….

  The worst had been the memories of Nathan. I sometimes feared my heavily drugged brain had been conversing with his ghost, and not just a hallucination.

  Will had snuck me out just before I’d completely lost my mind. Broken probably a half-dozen laws to find me a safe place to heal and legitimate people to prove I wasn’t nuts. My head was okay. Mostly. Better now that I had a home and something to live for. Someone to live for.

  I opened my eyes, blinked up at the ceiling, and felt Ollie’s breath warm and tickling across the bare flesh of my shoulder where he’d buried his face. What had woken me? I listened for a minute, searching the room and the house for what had startled me awake. But as always, in the dead of night, the giant mansion we both called home was eerily silent.

  I turned my head and smiled at Ollie. His pale brown, dark blond hair spilling just long enough to hide his eyes and trail over his ears. His skin ran in flawless golden lines I now knew intimately, covered at the hip only by one thin blanket. The heat was on so I didn’t worry he’d get cold.

  He had come home from his first overseas modeling job—four days away—and despite his obvious exhaustion, had jumped me. His libido was supercharged whenever we were together, but nonexistent when anyone else approached. His kink was me. And I loved it.

  He had to make sure I was real if we spent any time apart, so he’d touch me tentatively at first. Then would come the kiss, heated and devouring. And finally he’d drop into my lap and grind himself against me until we were both begging for more. Tonight had been no exception. Four days had made him clingy and needy. I was more than willing to try to keep up.

  A glance back at the clock and I groaned at the fact that it was just after 3:00 a.m. After the marathon of sex we’d had, I should have been worn out too, not waking up to stare into the darkness at my moonlit lover, waiting for daylight to return. Not that staring at Ollie wasn’t worth the sleepiness I’d be rewarded with later in the day. I shifted in bed a little, hip cramping up. It would hurt later from being overworked. Even after months of rehab, daily stretching, exercise, and yoga with Ollie, that hip and leg were shot. I didn’t stop working it, but it didn’t stop hurting either.

  “Kade.” Ollie made a small noise of protest in his sleep. I pulled him back against me, rubbing the scruff of my face lightly against his cheek, but knew he wouldn’t wake. Four days of traveling, cameras shoved in his face, dodging paparazzi, and then several hours of sex should have him out until at least noon tomorrow. Well today, I supposed. Since Tomas opened the office at nine and my first work meeting wasn’t until eleven, there was no reason to get up yet.

  I had an 8:00 a.m. appointment to get some ink. Was on the third round of a tat that was replacing some of my old stuff and hiding the scars on my right arm. Most of the color was already in from two other long sessions. This one was a touch up and last bit of detail. The tat covered the entire right arm. I was glad to be done. Or at least hoping to be finished for a few weeks. Tattooing over old work took longer. The colors were more vibrant this time, things I’d never have done when I served. But it was only one part of a larger plan. I had a lot of ink and a lot of damage to cover up. And the old stuff… it just didn’t fit anymore. Since they’d patched me back together in a field hospital, almost all of it was a mess anyway. A handful of skin grafts and thick white scars reminded me every day of the implosion of my life. The USMC with an eagle wrapped around my left bicep would stay—as it was oddly untouched—but color needed to be added. Life needed to be added.

  A little over a year and a half ago, I’d been injured in a roadside bomb. Most of my teammates had been killed in the same explosion that ended my career as a Marine. The medics had to sew me back together. I’d been lucky to not lose the leg, but only barely. That bomb had blown up my world. I’d walked in a fog of fading memories and pain until finding my way into Ollie’s life. And finally getting a chance with him was like falling down the fucking rabbit hole: white rabbit, smoking caterpillar, creepy talking cats and all. Ollie was my Alice, my savior, and co-conspirator. Most days I felt like the Mad Hatter, following him around with an incoherent mash of madness lingering just beyond our existence. But I couldn’t recall ever being so happy.

  I sighed and tucked my face into Ollie’s hair, sucking in the scent of him. He smelled like sex, sweat, and the orange-lavender body wash he used. Best of all he smelled like home. I closed my eyes and willed myself to go back to sleep. The house was quiet, the alarm was on—I’d set it the second Ollie walked in the door. Ollie was in my arms, and my Sig in the bedside drawer. We were safe.

  An angry buzzing made me jerk awake. I must have dozed off fast, because it was now five in the morning. I glanced at my phone beside the bed and it was still, but Ollie’s bounced around the nightstand on his side of the bed. He didn’t budge. I reached over him, swallowing back a groan as my whole right side protested the movement, and snapped up the phone. It still buzzed angrily in my hand, screen glowing with brightness that had me blinking away tears. Then shock.

  Jacob Elias, the screen said.

  Jacob. As in Ollie’s ex-boyfriend Jacob? The rock star asshole? I went from sleepy to annoyed in two seconds flat. Why did he still have Ollie’s number? Why did Ollie still
have Jacob programmed into his phone? Why was Jacob calling at five in the morning?

  “Hello?” I answered hoping my irritation conveyed itself through the phone. There was a moment of silence and I glanced back at the screen to make sure it was still connected, then said, “Hello?” again.

  “Who is this?” an unfamiliar male voice on the other side of the line demanded.

  “You called me. Shouldn’t that be my question?”

  “I didn’t call you. I called Ollie. I know this is still his phone. I had my PA check. So who are you and why do you have his phone?”

  PA? Personal assistant? Was this really Jacob Elias the rock star calling Ollie at five in the morning? I tucked the blankets around Ollie and crawled out of bed so as not to wake him, then made my way downstairs. “This is his boyfriend Kade, wondering what the fuck you’re doing calling Ollie at five in the morning. Jacob, right?”

  “Maybe you should ask him,” Jacob said, like he was implying they talked often. But I was with Ollie enough to know that wasn’t true. Ollie had a handful of people who were important to him: Will, Will’s wife Britney, Tomas, and Tyler. There were others that called or occasionally stopped by the office. Like his manager Terese or a designer who was working on something with him, but Jacob was not anywhere on that roster.

  “I’m asking you,” I told him. Downstairs, I checked the alarms, doors and windows to make sure everything was secure—set the alarm for movement since I was up. A few months ago, Ollie had been attacked when someone broke into the house. He’d almost died. Even all my years serving my country as a Marine didn’t prepare me for the blood that day. It’s hard seeing strangers hurt, dying, or dead. Seeing someone you love…. Stupid how much I loved him. But he’d made it through. We’d made it through. And I wasn’t about to let the asshole ex-boyfriend ruin that now.