Roman showed up at Cenobia’s home the next morning five minutes before her scheduled departure time. Yes, he’d be near her more as her principal daytime close protection. But he’d minimize the amount of time he spent with her padding around her luxury mini-fortress of a home, built around a courtyard that used the original fronts of three pastel-colored townhomes to camouflage it within a busy residential neighborhood. CEO Cenobia Trujillo had a habit of relaxing her retro-glam billionaire look—taking down her hair, kicking off her shoes—and he would manage how relaxed he saw her.
She needed him. The threats against her were growing, and her obstacles were real. She needed him protecting her back so she could push forward, past bad-mannered employees and stuck-in-the-past oil companies and her own damn dad. He would help her.
But, to do it, he wanted her shoed and work-clothed and surrounded by observant eyes. Last night, she’d slipped off her towering heels and rubbed her toes into the arches. He’d barely resisted pulling her feet into his lap, using his artful thumbs to thank and punish her for risking her trust fund on him. Then she’d gripped his hand with a ferocity that made it feel like their bones were melding, careless of his stumpy finger. She’d stared into him with her mink-pelt eyes and told him she wanted to get to know him better.
She knew plenty. He’d keep her safe, do his job, and maintain his distance.
His plan was instantly blown to hell when Glori Knight, who was supposed to be waiting in the follow-up vehicle, walked into Cenobia’s granite-and-stainless-steel kitchen to tell him that the driver had already left.
“He was told to meet us in the plaza. It’s a mile walk down the hill, sir,” she said as she delivered the news, a black scarf holding her chin-length curls off her face. Glori was former Army with military running through her veins. Both her African-American dad and her Mexican-American mom had served. She’d been one of his first hires. They’d gotten drunk together; they’d even saved each other’s bacon a time or two. She still insisted on calling him sir.
Roman wasn’t going to okay a jaunt through Guanajuato. He jerked out his phone, ready to rip the driver a new one, when he heard high heels tapping down the circular staircase. Between the gleaming wood steps, he could see shell-pink heels then smooth, mocha-colored calves and then a silver-grey, body-curving dress covered in white polka dots then a tiny pink belt around a squeezable waist, and then...
“Buenos días. Isn’t it a beautiful morning?” Cenobia asked as she reached the first level, eyes sparkling and the balls of her cheeks rosy. She’d sleeked all that thick black hair into a bun high on her head. “I want to show you my city.”
She slipped on a pastel pink blazer as she hummed.
“Put her two most experienced people in front,” Roman told Glori. “You back us up.”
Glori, who had one of the best poker faces he’d ever seen, worked it hard now as she gave a nod.
When they stepped out on the street in front of Cenobia’s home, the sky was a rich true blue, the morning October air cool. Old-town Guanajuato was built into a canyon, and Cenobia’s home was part of a neighborhood at the very top. Below them, brightly painted row houses, red terra-cotta roofs, and the rounded cupolas and spires built during the city’s wealthy silver-mining days glittered like candies in a bowl. With her guards walking ten paces in front, Cenobia led Roman across the street to a narrow set of stairs.
As they began to descend the brick-and-mortar steps, Cenobia explained that much of Guanajuato was accessible only on foot using the callejones, the tiny alleys and stairways that they were walking along now.
“It has limited development but it’s preserved a way of life,” she said, motioning to a doorway with a cobalt-blue door and bright fuchsia bougainvillea hanging over the top of it. “You can only access the center of Guanajuato by driving through a tunnel, so American tourists driving past on the way to San Miguel de Allende think there’s nothing here. The Mexican tourists know what a jewel it is.”
“That’s like the Monte,” he said, keeping an eye on their surroundings. Revolutionary murals, carved wooden shutters, antique fountains that used to be the primary source of water, and vistas between the homes of the bright city and green hills provided something new to see with every step they descended. “The mountains kept out invaders and preserved the kingdom, but without proper care in modern times, the isolation almost did ’em in.”
Cenobia smiled at him. “You and Mateo have certainly opened doors to the Monte, with all the transportation upgrades,” she said. “I was disappointed I didn’t get to see the train depot renovation.”
Roman was about to grunt a response when he remembered. He narrowed his eyes on her. “Sad you didn’t get to gloat with Mateo that y’all were right?”
Her smile grew. “The initial plan you approved was very...secure,” she teased.
“Mateo called it a concrete igloo; he never worries himself too much about tact.” Roman hadn’t wanted to be in charge of the capital improvement project, but his siblings’ hands had been full. “What’d he think he was going to get from an army grunt?”
“He just believed maintaining the view of the Picos was a touch more preferable than turning the depot into a very safe but mildly depressing holding cell.” She wasn’t doing a great job holding back her grin. But then her eyes traveled down him. “Your design eye doesn’t always fail you.”
He was wearing grey on grey on grey—a light grey fresco wool suit over a sleek Egyptian cotton grey shirt and a slim grey silk Hermes tie—and he’d just been thinking how glad he was that he’d sacrificed the monochrome of grey by going for his tan, hand-stained St. Crispin derby boots, which had some give to them.
He didn’t know how her feet were handling the descent in those high pink heels.
He checked their two and ten. “At the time, I sure as hell didn’t appreciate Mateo getting Daniel—you—to weigh in like he—you—was our dad.”
“You two seem to have found a system that works.”
The steps had flattened out to a narrow, stone-paved pathway winding between homes.
“Yeah,” he said. “We go a few rounds, he gets hot under the collar, I let him get it out of his system, then we meet somewhere in the middle.” He wouldn’t mention the occasional headlock.
He and Mateo were almost as close in age as two brothers could be—Roman was actually a couple of hours older than the king—although they couldn’t be more different. Mateo was born into Spanish royalty; Roman grew up in a Texas trailer park. Mateo was a scientist; Roman was a well-aimed gun. Mateo led emotions first, thinking about consequences later. Roman gauged the ripple effect of every move before he made it.
He glanced at her and saw her watching him with a look on her face. A glow.
“It must be quite a thing to find a brother,” she said softly.
In the continued slow reveal of the way he and Cenobia were intertwined, he realized how enmeshed this woman was in his relationship with the most important person in his life.
“Report,” he said. The callejón was about to open up into a plaza. The employees ten paces ahead and behind them could hear everything they said through his earpiece.
He put his hand out, bringing her to a stop, as he got status updates.
Then he looked at Cenobia and gave a nod. “Okay. All clear.”
Her eyes were watchful, observant, and she lightly licked her lips, painted a pink like the inside of a seashell.
“Let’s go,” he said, motioning with two fingers like he was her squad leader. They moved out into the stone-paved plaza. In front of her, he took a big, honeysuckle-free inhale of air.
Vendors selling churros and colorful liquados in front of a pink sandstone church called “buenos dias” to Señorita Trujillo as he hustled her across toward her waiting car. Cenobia replied by name.
“Please tell me you change your route on these morning strolls,” Roman said.
“Constantly,” she said without dropping her smile. “Religiously. And with intense paranoia.”
Though, really, it didn’t matter.
She was so gloriously beautiful in the morning light he was sure she blinded anyone who saw her.
When he’d finally—finally—gotten her to the safety of her corner office in the Trujillo Industries headquarters, Roman met with his people in a spare conference room they’d taken over.
Glori led the meeting from the other end of the table. “Trujillo’s threat level has been elevated from moderate to substantial and the University of Guanajuato team is now going to augment her personal security.”
The two people who’d been monitoring the university library nodded as they rooted through a couple bags of candy.
“The tech folks say the encryption used to camouflage the emails is going to be tough to crack.”
The crunching and wrapper rustling paused. Glori had started the tradition of bringing local candy of wherever they were stationed to meetings, and bags with names like Chupa Chups, Bolitochas, and Bandera de Coco were scattered over the conference table. The rule was that you had to finish whatever you put in your mouth, and it had made for some hilarious moments to lighten the load of their topics.
But there was no hilarity now as the implication of what Glori said sunk in. Sheppard Security was the best and no one was shy about that fact. The firm employed the kind of hackers that world security leaders checked in on regularly to make sure they were content, well paid, and busily occupied. Around this conference table alone were two former Marines, a team guy, two former Army, and three of the brightest minds from the Farm.
Right now, this elite group was getting played. The encryption was going to be tough, they hadn’t identified a leak, and the source of the now-verified threat against Cenobia was still unidentified.
The analyst who’d been researching the note left on Cenobia’s car gave an update. “The fact that she was blindfolded is in twenty-three percent of the online information about the kidnapping.” He took a bite of a bar he was holding—Pulparindo, it said on the wrapper—then grimaced. “So it’s not widely known, but it’s not hard to discover.”
He sighed and bravely took another bite of the candy.
We kept you blindfolded last time, the note said. This time, we’ll cut off your eyelids so we’ll be the last thing you see.
He swallowed then looked hesitant to keep talking. He was a newer hire to Sheppard Security.
Glori motioned for him to continue.
He focused on Roman. “Sir, is there any off-the-books info we should know that might draw a clearer line to Las Luces Oscuras?”
It was generally agreed that the drug cartel Las Luces Oscuras was responsible for kidnapping Cenobia, although there was no one sitting in jail to pay for it. Thirteen years ago, her father had been planning to build a factory that would have loosened the cartel’s hold of an area in Zacatecas, and they’d sent numerous threats before the kidnapping.
“FBI and Mexican intelligence thought it was Las Luces Oscuras,” Roman said. “The tiny ransom they asked for was just the kind of taunt they liked.”
Daniel Trujillo had received a ransom note demanding one hundred fifty thousand dollars, pocket change for his most precious treasure. He’d paid it immediately, of course, but his daughter hadn’t been returned to him. The fact that she’d been kidnapped Mexican-cartel style in the U.S. made the event huge news. Six months home from Iraq and barely sleeping, Roman had been keeping up with the news reports from the couch in his mom’s trailer while half-heartedly spreading the word about his fledgling security company.
Leads for the FBI to investigate were drying up, the tycoon had told him when he called. And Daniel was worried that even if they did locate her, the corruption that plagued the Mexican government and law enforcement would mean the drug cartel would be notified before his daughter could be rescued.
He’d begged Roman to find and extract her.
Between Odessa and Houston, Roman had made four stops: his storage locker to kit up with equipment the Medal of Honor selection committee would have frowned upon, an army surplus store, the home of a former Ranger buddy working on tech, and the printer’s shop to finally pick up the business cards he’d wondered if he was ever going to use. Sheppard Security—Roman Sheppard, founder and CEO, they said on a thick cardstock that was soft to the touch.
He’d felt more at ease than he had in six months.
It was easy for a good ol’ boy to ask a few questions of the people invisible to everyone else: the cleaning staff at Cenobia’s college dorm; park maintenance in Hermann Park, where Cenobia liked to hang out with friends; transit drivers working the same routes, who noticed the unusual in their routines like a firework show in March.
He’d followed the kidnappers’ trail north. When the service station clerk outside of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town of Channing, Texas told him about a caravan of shiny Escalades heading west into nothing but scrubland, Roman had felt the full-body thrill of riding a C-130’s combat landing into Bagram, followed by a snap back into absolute calm and focus.
He’d craved that feeling since the instant he’d returned to American soil. Using his innate gifts and military training, he’d crafted himself into one of a handful of people on the planet who could save her. This is what he was good at. He’d made a brutal choice to commit himself to the warrior life, and this was him putting that commitment into action.
The surprise when he’d descended on the decommissioned military bunker was absolute, the violence he’d applied to take out guys without alerting others who could use her as a human shield was surgical. She’d been a wild thing when he’d found her, kicking and biting until he had to restrain her to get her blindfold off so she could see his face.
To prevent an ambush or a mole on the inside giving away their position, Roman had waited until he was minutes away from delivering her to her father to contact the FBI. They’d swooped down on the decommissioned base, but in the four hours between her rescue and return, the site had already been scrubbed clean.
“The FBI couldn’t put together enough evidence to go after Las Luces Oscuras,” he said. “And the Mexican government, they made a few condemning speeches but...” He shrugged. “I told Daniel what I’ve told y’all—Las Luces Oscuras might have carried out the kidnapping but no way they organized it. Those guys in the bunker were blunt instruments; getting her away from her security team and out of Houston was precise and organized. I was a one-man team without enough to prove my theory, and the FBI didn’t care about my gut.”
He’d helped Daniel and Daniel’s investigative team as much as he could. But when all the leads were exhausted, the tycoon felt he had to focus on the future of his daughter and business rather than getting hung up on the past. That failure made Roman understand he couldn’t go it alone in the States any more than he had in Mosul—in the Rangers, one became two, two became a team, a team became a squad, and so on.
He’d ultimately built a squad that had saved hundreds of people, saved the kind of people who saved thousands of others.
Rescuing Cenobia Trujillo had given Roman a clarity of purpose outside of the military. Establishing Sheppard Security had given him the motivation to seek counseling for his pretty obvious PTSD.
He knocked his knuckles on the conference table. “If Las Luces Oscuras is back, why? What’s their motive? They’re fucking scary but they got away clean from the country’s scariest billionaire. What makes it worth getting back in his cross hairs now? Mexico’s most dangerous drug cartel is one of any number of enemies looking to hurt our client; last time, investigators got hung up on them too early and missed the real bad guys. I don’t want to make that same mistake. Let’s do what we do best and keep her safe.”
Each team member gave a decisive nod as they grabbed favorite bags of candies and finally got to spit out what they couldn’t stand to swallow.
When he went to pick her up that evening, he found her on the phone. She beckoned him into her office but continued on the call with a grimace as he sat on a couch arm at the back of the room.
Her lips were naked, licked clean, and she’d redone her hair into a long, wavy ponytail at her nape. When she swiveled in her chair, he caught sight of bare, dark feet and shell-pink toenails before he was studying her chandelier.
Someone needed to tell her not to get so comfy in her office. Someone needed to hang up the receiver and carry her to her car.
She looked exhausted. His crew guarding her home commented that they didn’t know when she slept. She served them café de ollas at random middle-of-the-night hours and lights went on and off throughout the night.
Roman dealt with insomnia, too.
“Yes, I understand that Alphawind Autos is releasing a similarly energy-efficient car, but I never agreed to share our time slot with them,” she said with forced patience. She rubbed her ear where a dangly earring hung. “Our car is unique in every way. Your coordinator has already assured us that the Frankfurt Auto Show would be thrilled to showcase such a...”
Her face suddenly scrunched in consternation.
“Who said we’d be amenable to a joint showcase?”
Cenobia’s face hardened as her jaw tightened, her wide mouth drew into a line, and her eyes widened and blazed. “I see,” she said into the receiver.
He wondered if those two chill words shriveled up balls on the other end of the line like they were doing here in her office.
“I will have a talk with him. In the meantime, please ask your coordinator to speak to me or my assistant directly until I get this confusion straightened out.”
After she said her farewells and disconnected from the call, she stared sightlessly at her phone for several minutes. Roman stayed silent and allowed himself the pleasure of watching that big brain of hers work.
He’d gotten accustomed to the feeling of Cenobia being aware of him, just like he was aware of her. His thoughts had never traveled far today from the fact that she was in the same building.
But she was more than the teenaged girl he rescued, the young woman who loaned him a fortune, and the gorgeous CEO who asked him to keep her safe. She was a powerful, world-changing industrialist who had a lot more to think about than her bodyguard.
Watching her ignore him as she cogitated stirred him as fiercely as the grip of her silky hand.
“My vice president of marketing and publicity has told the Frankfurt Auto Show that we would be interested in sharing our showcase with a competitor,” she said without preamble, looking at Roman as she leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs. “Señor Vasquez explained to the organizers that sharing the spotlight would benefit Trujillo Industries when our car garners a tepid response.”
“Do you want to go talk to him?” Roman asked. He had a way of dealing with Lance Vasquez that would blow the highlights right out of the guy’s hair.
“He’s gone for the night.” She closed her eyes, then kept them closed a tired second too long. “Tomorrow is soon enough.”
Roman stayed seated on the couch arm and worked to look docile as a house cat while he wrestled with an unholy need to feed her, bathe her, pleasure her until she slipped into a good night’s sleep, then eradicate one of her problems by knocking on Vasquez’s door.
“Let’s go home,” she said.
But they didn’t go home. She told her driver to drop them off at a different plaza. Roman started to argue with her but couldn’t sustain it under the barrage of her tired eyes.
Her guards in the car in front and Glori in the car behind were alerted.
He let Cenobia set the slow pace in her curvy, polka-dotted dress, her pink heels tapping on cobblestone streets that once again reminded him of the Monte. The night was quiet and although they walked Guanajuato’s most touristed thoroughfares, past baroque churches, Diego Rivera’s boyhood home, and sites of the Mexican revolution, only the occasional couple or group of twentysomethings passed them. Roman kept an eye on rooftops and dark doorways and trusted the qualified guards. In the Jardín de la Unión, where they waited for the gorditas Cenobia ordered from a street vendor, a mariachi band played a slow, heartsick song from a gazebo.
They stood beneath a tree lit with fairy lights that twinkled in Cenobia’s eyes when she looked up at him.
“Alphawind Autos is the competitor trying to horn in on your show?” he asked.
They were an American car manufacturer founded in the ’80s. He’d almost bought a used Alphawind truck when he’d returned from Iraq.
Her eyes blinked slowly before she nodded. “We’ve been manufacturing parts for them for years and have always had a good relationship. They’re adjusting to the idea of us as competition.”
“Not well,” he said, and Cenobia bobbled her head as the vendor signaled that their gorditas were ready.
They walked and ate. As Cenobia sighed “Que rico” in a way that raised the hair on Roman’s nape, he finally understood that she wasn’t immune to good food. She was just indifferent.
He needed to learn how to make these.
After taking the same steep walk up that they’d walked down that morning—Roman tightened the perimeter, bringing the guards closer as they walked through narrow, moonlit, honeysuckle-soaked passageways—they entered through the fake facade of her home and into her courtyard.
His team handed off patrol positions as Cenobia stood in her open doorway, looking up at him with the smudge of her sleepless nights showing beneath her pretty eyes.
“Would you like to come in?” she invited, motioning inside. “I could make you a café before you...”
“No,” Roman said abruptly. “Maybe you should lay off, too.”
Her eyebrows quirked. “¿Por qué?”
“That much caffeine this late isn’t good for you.”
Her sparkling flash of irritation was getting to be familiar.
“Muchas gracias, padre,” she said, putting her hand on a hip he’d been working to keep his eyes off of as they’d walked up the canyon. “I’ve lived on my own for the last thirteen years; somehow I’ve managed my bedtime routine just fine.”
As he took a half step closer, his hand was in his pocket muting his earpiece on his phone.
“But when you do you actually go to bed?” he asked, urgent but hushed. “I know you see the finish line, but you got to get some rest to reach it.”
Her cat eyes were suspicious as she looked up at him. The only way she’d become the woman she had was through mutiny. But she had to realize he was on her side.
“I know what it’s like,” he whispered. “Your brain ping-ponging from one worry to the next, the anxiety getting bigger and heavier in the dark.”
Her long lashes blinked. She scraped her teeth against her bottom lip. “What do you do?” she asked, also in a whisper.
“Planks. Sit-ups. Push-ups.” He leaned his shoulder against the stone wall of her entryway as he looked down at her. “I get back in bed, set my timer for thirty minutes, and if I’m not asleep, do ’em all over again.” He lowered his head. “I avoid drinkin’ heavenly tasting coffees after midnight.”
She rolled her eyes and looked away, but gave him a view of her shy dimple. That little press of amusement in her skin was better than any medal. It lured him a step closer. “Trust that I’m gonna take care of you, Cenobia.” We. He meant we. “Lay your troubles down for the night.”
When she looked up at him, he realized he’d overshot. Like, by a mile. He was way too close to her and she had to tilt up to meet his eyes, offering up her gorgeous face—luminous forehead, velvety skin, bitable end of her nose—and her wide mouth.
Her lips were soft and shiny, not bone dry like his had gone.
Her sweet scent filled the entryway, becoming deadly when he inhaled it this close, this late, in the dark. Her eyes traveled over his face and landed on his mouth. Then she tilted up her wide chin, and stroked her bottom lip with her wet, pink tongue.
Will you go to war with me, brother?
Before every mission during his second tour, when his squad was hot and jacked and already loaded down with sixty-five pounds of equipment, the preacher would make a cross in the dirt and say a prayer. Then he’d look at Roman, the squad leader, and ask, “Will you go to war with me, brother?”
Roman said yes with excitement in his heart every single time.
He’d made himself into a man who couldn’t accept Cenobia’s invitation.
He stepped back. “If it’ll keep you from tossin’ and turning, I’ll bring the crew coffee.” That crew could come patrolling through the courtyard any second.
“They won’t like yours as much as they like mine,” she said readily, as if nothing had happened.
“I know. I won’t either.” Nothing had happened. “But we’ll survive. Night, Cenobia.”
He turned on a heel and turned his earpiece back on.
He ignored her soft, mocking reply—“Cen”—instead of hanging on to it as the excuse to follow her inside.