[4 Seasons 01] Seducing Summer by Serenity Woods

special, not a friend or family
member, and certainly not a love interest. He had a job to do, and he had to
concentrate on that and keep his emotions out of it.
    With that in mind, he had things to do
before he was able to call it a day. First, he drove to his house on Massey
Road, high on a hill overlooking the harbor. The wind was getting up and had
whipped the blue-gray water into choppy waves that made the outgoing ferry bob
about like a piece of polystyrene. No wonder it was nicknamed the Vomit Comet,
he thought, feeling a little queasy just looking at it.
    He went inside and changed out of his suit
into a T-shirt and sweatpants, then drove to the gym. He’d only planned to have
a quick workout, but while he moved through the various pieces of equipment,
his mind began to wander. Unfortunately, it seemed to want to conjure up images
of a certain strawberry blonde in various pieces of lingerie, and, cross with
himself, he pushed his body harder and longer until he was limp as a beaten
chicken breast and dripping with sweat.
     He showered and changed again, annoyed
with himself for getting carried away. Although he liked to stretch the muscles
around his damaged hip and keep it flexible, he’d pushed it too hard, and it
ached now, a dull throb deep inside. He popped two Panadol, drove home, fought
the urge to pick up takeout on the way, and made himself pasta with a large
salad, which he ate sitting at the table as he checked his emails.
    He scrolled through the daily report the
office had sent him of comings and goings around Callie’s office—nothing
suspicious, from the looks of it—then checked the report from Phoebe’s security
team. One operative had recorded that she’d seen a dark-haired, bearded man out
in front of Phoebe’s home in Wellington not once but twice, several hours
apart. He’d only stayed thirty seconds the first time and twenty seconds the
next, but she’d highlighted it as a yellow alert, and Gene copied the photo
she’d taken of him from her parked car and sent it to all his teams and their
contact at the STG so they could watch out for possible sightings of the guy.
    Still eating his pasta, he took out the
notepad he’d used during the day and flipped to the pages where he’d made notes
during lunch about Callie’s office and her general routine. He typed them up,
mentally running through possible problems in his head, planning out the best
route to take if an incident occurred, thinking about ways he might be able to
improve security there without her noticing.
    Then he started up a new file called
“Security on Tour.” After staring at the title for a while, he pushed away from
the table, took a beer out of the fridge, and went outside onto the deck. Easing
into his favorite deckchair with his sore hip, he took a long swig of the beer
and stared out to sea.
    Working as a personal protection officer often
involved lots of tedious, dull work—from surveillance to intelligence gathering
to threat recognition and assessment. Facts and data were important, and as it
was easy to miss little details in a sea of information, it required a keen eye
and constant concentration to make sure nothing important was overlooked.
    But it also involved a large percentage of
instinct. In his days in the Army, and then in security, Gene had learned to
rely on his gut feelings, and now they were telling him that the real threat to
Callie—if there were to be one—would come when they were out on the road. It
would be harder for whoever was following them to keep track of them, but it
would be a lot easier for a hitman to get close to her. Unless Gene revealed
his mission, and possibly even if he did, he couldn’t stop her shopping, eating
at restaurants, or going out for walks late at night. All he could do was
remain as vigilant as possible, and do his best to protect her when they were
together.
    In the pocket of his jeans, his phone rang.
He pulled it out and checked the screen, expecting it