Model Bodyguard (Haven Investigations Book 2) Read online

  “Hell no,” I said getting to my feet.

  Ollie took my hand. “We could be a ménage,” he said quietly.

  Both Jacob and I looked at him. Was he nuts? Then my gut churned at the idea. Did he really want Jacob back?

  “The media knows Kade and I are dating. It would be odd for me to suddenly be back with you and Kade out of the picture,” Ollie pointed out. “But if we both pretended to be close to you, we could look into it and people would be less suspicious.”

  “We run an investigation service,” I said.

  “An investigation service no one takes seriously,” Jacob told me.

  Ollie blinked at him, and I saw the first edges of anger begin to overtake the panic. “Then why are you here?” he demanded.

  “I didn’t say I didn’t take you seriously,” Jacob backpedaled.

  “Right.” Ollie stood. “I’ve transferred a copy of the files to my computer and I will review them. We will let you know tomorrow if we decide to take your case or not.” He glanced at me, and the room was so silent I could hear voices from the lobby. My eleven o’clock cheating spouse case had arrived.

  Jacob stared at us both, not standing until I was at the door opening it. “Tomas will see you out,” I told him.

  “Ollie….” Jacob said, but Ollie held up a hand. He was done.

  “As I said, we’ll review your case. Good day, Mr. Elias.”

  His lips tightened into a line, but he turned and walked through the door. Tomas thanked him profusely for his time and saw him out of the office. He returned a few seconds later with wide eyes. “Your eleven o’clock is in the conference room.”

  “Do I need to tell Tyler you’re flirting with rock stars?” I asked him steadily so he wouldn’t know I was teasing.

  He flushed. “It was Jacob Elias. He’s like a god or something.”

  “Or something. Would you give up Tyler for a night with a rock star?”

  Tomas blinked his big chocolate eyes at me. God, the kid did that so well: the wide-eyed, innocent thing. Funny since he was an ex–porn star dating a hard-ass lawyer. But I was pretty sure Tomas had Ty wrapped around his little finger. Or maybe something lower. “I love Ty. I would never—”

  Ollie patted him on the shoulder. “It’s okay. Kade’s messing with you. Can you call B for me? See if she’s free yet. I think I need some air.”

  “And food,” I prompted him as I pulled up the file for my next meeting on my tablet.

  “I’ll eat. I promise. We’re planning to try this new vegan place near the Wharf.”

  I looked him over for a minute. “You gonna be okay?”

  He shrugged. “Aren’t I always?”

  No. But I’d let that go.

  “I will look over the files. Maybe have the computer scan them for similarities.”

  “Okay. We’ll meet up after lunch, then.” I really didn’t like the idea of him looking into Jacob’s case. Maybe there was still a spark between them. Ollie was smart enough to not want back on the rock star roller coaster, but my head wouldn’t shut up with the jealous anxiety either. Not a feeling I was used to. But he was mine, dammit. Had been for almost six months. And I was happy. The happiest I could recall ever being in my life. Did he get that? “I love you,” I reminded him suddenly.

  “I love you too,” he told me. He accepted a kiss from me, though I could feel his pulse under my fingers still beating hard. He was still fighting a panic attack.

  “If this Jacob thing bothers you, let it go. He can find someone else to do the job.”

  Ollie closed his eyes and leaned forward so he could rest his chin on my shoulder. He let me hold him for a while. “It’s not just him,” he finally said.

  And I knew that had clenched it for him. Ollie was all about the bigger picture because Nathan had taught him to be.

  “He has a half-dozen siblings working for him. They aren’t all bad. Plus I know a lot of his wardrobe and makeup crew. Still talk to some of them on occasion. See them around at events or even trade secrets. They could probably find other work….”

  “But if we can figure out what’s going on and maybe stop it, everyone would be better off. Yes?”

  He gave me half a smile and nodded as he pulled away. “You have a meeting.”

  “And you’re supposed to do lunch and designing with B. Look into this later. There’s no rush. It sounds like whatever is going on with Jacob has been going on for a while. He can wait a few more hours.” I kissed his forehead and shoved him toward Tomas. “Fix his hair. He looks like he stuck his finger in a light socket.”

  Tomas snorted at me, a very Ollie-like snort. “Let your hair grow out this long and I bet you’d be just as frizzy.”

  He was right. I winked at him and headed into the conference room to meet up with my eleven o’clock client. We’d end up taking Jacob’s case. Even if it was just to work it from the sidelines. Interviews, following folks, tech research. Ollie hated turning people away. He had hard limits when it came to cases. He didn’t work with hate groups or try to plant things on people when someone offered to pay for it. He was honest, and while the world around us was less than kind, helpful. He had a list of lawyers, therapists, police, and even churches he could recommend people to if they needed it. Doing the job was never just about the money for him. I was pretty sure Nathan would have been damn proud.

  Chapter Three

  CATCHING SOMEONE cheating is ridiculously easy. Most people just aren’t that smart. Usually if someone suspected their spouse or significant other of cheating, they were right. Instinct, maybe? Change of behavior? Sure, sometimes it was just the person’s own paranoia or dissatisfaction in the relationship, but that was rare. It was no wonder why Ollie had been so hesitant in the beginning to actually start a relationship with me. When he saw a couple of cheating spouse cases a week, it was hard to believe there was anyone out there who was faithful anymore.

  My client suspected her husband was banging his secretary. It was the sort of boring narrative that a lot of porn started off with. The client came from money and had a prenup. She had to prove he was cheating before she could toss him to the curb. Unlike a lot of the unsure and somewhat fearful clients that came my way in the past, Ellena Louiton was confident and apparently ready to end her marriage. It made me wonder if the husband really was cheating or if she was just looking for a way out without having to pay up. She’d given me his schedule, notating the times that had changed recently, and since Ollie was off with Britney, I headed out to tail Mr. Richard Louiton.

  After watching him at work for three hours, I had to stop for a restroom break and for food. Unless the guy was taking his secretary into one of the bathroom stalls, he wasn’t doing anything at work. The high-priced insurance agency he worked for didn’t allow any of them to have private offices. They worked in cubes, which I’d discovered after striking up a conversation with the desk clerk on their floor about setting up an appointment to speak face-to-face with an agent. There were two private meeting rooms, but they had to be booked by the desk clerk for client meetings. And each secretary, assistant maybe, whatever the PC term was, was actually assigned to four agents.

  Mr. Louiton’s assistant was an attractive early twentysomething blond who dressed a little inappropriately for an insurance office, but she seemed to treat the agents she worked with professionally. I’d pulled them up on Ollie’s background software: Mr. Louiton, his secretary, Hanna Slater, and the other agents he shared her with. Everything checked out normal. Well, one of his coworkers had a gambling problem, but nothing on Louiton.

  I ended up parking the SUV almost two blocks away from the sandwich shop and calling Ollie while I waited for my toasted sub. He answered, somewhat breathless on the third ring, but sounded happy to hear from me. “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey. Did you eat?” I put the Bluetooth in my ear so I could still eat and talk to him. He wasn’t bothered by my chewing else I would have waited until after I ate to call him.

  “Yes. They h
ad this amazing avocado salad. Even B liked it.”

  “Good. You feeling okay?” He sounded better. Calmer.

  “Yes. Just picked up a few vintage pieces my favorite consignment shop called me about. Can’t wait to work with them. I’ve already sketched out a few ideas. We’re headed home so B can try on the one I just finished.”

  He was purposely focused on his designing. Probably because it was so far outside of his past with Jacob that he could actually keep busy without thinking too hard or getting lost in emotion. “Sounds great.”

  “I picked up a few shirts for you too. My tailor finished up the changes I requested.”

  “No sequins or anything, right?” Ollie loved texture, and on him I loved it too, but on me it just bothered my scars.

  “Nope. They’re super soft. I promise.”

  I glanced up and caught Mr. Louiton walking into the sandwich shop with the secretary beside him. They weren’t touching or anything, but standing overly close for a working relationship.

  “You got real quiet,” Ollie said.

  “Watching a possible CS and a coworker,” I told him quietly while trying to eat my sandwich and not be too conspicuous. CS was code for cheating spouse. They didn’t look my way at all, just got their ordered sandwiches and left. I followed behind them at a little distance. They must have walked from the insurance office. “Leaving together.”

  “Cheater case from this morning?”

  “Yep.” Most cheater cases took less than twenty-four hours to close. It was just a matter of how often the cheater actually cheated. For a lot of them, it became an itch they just needed to scratch, even if all it came down to was blow jobs by paid whores.

  They met up with one of the other agents, not far from where I was parked. He must have stopped at a different place to get food. Well, this was going to be a bust, wasn’t it? Maybe they were doing the dirty after work. I’d sort of hoped to catch them fast and be home for dinner.

  I trailed them past my SUV but had to stop, blinking for a minute at the sight of my truck. All four tires were slashed. “Fuck.”

  “What?” Ollie asked, obviously alarmed. “Are you okay?”

  “Someone slashed my tires. All four of them.” I’d not had that happen ever before. Not even in some of the worst areas of San Fran that I’d parked in to follow people. And the area around the sandwich shop wasn’t exactly seedy.

  “Donovan did that to my car,” Ollie whispered.

  “Donovan is in jail,” I reminded him. We’d both testified to put his former friend behind bars after several murders and attempted murders. “I’ve gotta call for a tow.”

  “The tires for that monster truck of yours are like $350 a piece,” Ollie pointed out.

  “Still have to tow it. I only have one spare.”

  “I can come pick you up.” Ollie had replaced his old VW Bug just a month ago. He’d gotten a brand-new one that looked almost identical to his old one, which had been destroyed by Donovan. But there wasn’t much that could get me in a car with Ollie driving.

  “You do your thing with B. I’ll get the truck towed, and if they can’t get to it right away, I’ll get a rental. This cheater thing is the only case I have right now.” I’d delayed or declined any other cases for this week because I wasn’t sure how Ollie would be after his trip. We were in the black, so financially we could afford a break. Even if the new tires were going to set us back a bit. Ollie was a wiz with finances, and with the bodyguard work, cheating and insurance fraud cases, along with his normal background check load, we were more than stable enough to have a few days off.

  “Jacob’s case,” Ollie quietly reminded me.

  “I’ll look into it while I’m waiting for the SUV,” I promised. “Don’t dwell on it. It’s not our case yet.” Maybe I’d find something in the case that would give us a good reason to say no to Jacob. If he was trying to play Ollie like Donovan had, I’d probably kill him, and that was not a good idea since he was famous and all. “I’ll call you later when I know what’s going on with the SUV.”

  Ollie agreed and we hung up. I glanced around the street as I dialed for a tow. The insurance guy and his possible girlfriend were nowhere in sight. So much for an easy mark. I glared at the SUV. This was not how I’d wanted to spend the afternoon.

  THE SHOP my SUV had been taken to was busy, but Tyler had called in a personal favor to get them to push my vehicle up on their roster so it’d be done in a few hours, not a few days. My relationship with Ollie’s ex and Tomas’s current was a little weird. Tyler was a hard-ass. He was also a huge African-American man who made a lot of people hesitate to cross him. I’d worked out with him once, but beside him I just felt scrawny. While I wasn’t back up to my prebomb Marine fitness and probably never would be, I wasn’t exactly small. Tyler just had huge shoulders and bulging biceps, which he hid most days under well-tailored suits. He could probably bench-press Ollie and me together without breaking a sweat. I tried to not let it bother me. Will was bulkier than me too, in better shape though he was a decade older. He also had left the Corps in perfect health while I’d been carried out on a stretcher.

  Will and Ty did not get along at all. I think it was a discomfort thing. Tyler was a trans man. And Will just didn’t get that. He always seemed to be searching for feminine traits when Tyler came around, but Ty was like the übermasculine guy. We had all sort of learned not to put Ty and Will in situations alone together. They’d not yet come to blows, but unless Will got help for his perception issues about trans folks, it would happen eventually. Ty was nothing if not good at pushing people’s buttons.

  He’d offered to pay for the tires. I’d refused. We did okay. I think Tyler still thought we were struggling for money like Ollie had been before I’d come back into his life to help. He’d called me on Ollie’s behest and directed me to bring my SUV to this auto shop. At least the shop was huge and had the required tires in stock even if it was going to set me back $1,600 plus another $300 for the tow.

  “Ollie would never take my money either,” Ty protested.

  “We don’t need it. We’re fine,” I assured him.

  “Even with that monster house?”

  “Even with. Ollie just got back from a modeling trip, remember? It paid a couple grand. Plus business has been good at Haven.” Ollie’s trip had actually paid almost 30k, and he’d made contacts with a few smaller high-end shops that were interested in carrying his line of gender-fluid fashion. And he’d just opened a tiny web shop that sold one-off clothing he’d modified. The vintage stuff he posted was always gone in minutes. He had a couple local seamstresses who were doing inventory for more off-the-rack designs, but that was mostly just for placement in small local boutiques. He had no desire to be mainstream. “We’re not in danger of shutting down. I promise.”

  Tyler sighed. “I offered Tomas a job at the firm.”

  I bit back a curse. Ty could probably pay Tomas triple what we could. But both Ollie and I loved having Tomas manning the office. “What did he say?”

  Another sigh. “He turned me down. Said he didn’t want it to be weird. Us working and living together at the same time.”

  “He’s moving in with you?” That was news. But Tomas spent more of his time at Tyler’s high-priced condo than his little apartment with four friends.

  “Yes. Already moved this past weekend. Not that he had much to move.”

  “Wow. Congrats.” I smiled. “So he said no to the job?”

  Ty growled at me. Probably heard the joy in my voice. “He likes working in that little office of yours.”

  The office wasn’t really that small. Though compared to Tyler’s firm, maybe it was. Whatever. “We’re happy to have him. He’s a great employee.” Reliable and smart, Tomas was actually in college now training for a criminal justice degree. I didn’t know if he wanted to be a PI like Ollie and me or if he wanted to help Tyler out at the law firm. Either way it was a good career path for him. He’d looked into chef school until he’d spent a weekend
shadowing a friend of Ty’s who was a full-time chef. Tomas had admitted that while he liked to cook, he thought the high stress would be too much for him. There were days being a PI could be pretty stressful too, but since he worked with us I figured it was an informed decision he could make without our interference.

  Ty paused, then said, “Tomas told me Jacob was by today.”

  “Yeah. Wants us to look into something for him.”

  “He wants Ollie back. Don’t mistake his intentions for anything but that.”

  Yeah, probably. But I wasn’t going to let that happen. “Me and Ollie are good.”

  “Good for each other,” Tyler corrected me. “I’ve never seen Ollie so stable and happy. Not even when Nathan was around. Don’t let that asshole push you aside.”

  “Hadn’t planned to,” I assured him. “Not to sound all Neanderthal and all that, but Ollie is mine. I’m still fixing the stuff Jacob did to him.”

  “Jacob’s charismatic. And manipulative. Be careful.”

  All things I knew already. “We haven’t even promised to take his case yet.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t.”

  But that couldn’t just be my decision. If there was anything that pissed off Ollie more than me leaving him out of things, I had yet to find it. “I’ll talk about it with Ollie.”

  There was a moment of silence. “I’ll come by with Tomas for dinner tonight. We’ll bring food.”

  “We’re really fine.”

  “I believe you. But we haven’t sat down together for a meal since the New Year.”

  True. And it had sort of been a monthly thing before that. “Ollie’s doing that vegan thing right now. And Will is working, so Britney might still be over.”

  “I’m aware of Ollie’s diet. Tomas has been doing the same thing for the last month. I’ll bring lots of rabbit food, and meat for us carnivores. Britney is fine.” He said nothing about Will being gone.

  “I’ll send Ollie a text that you’re coming over.”

  “I will call him. Just worry about the SUV.”