Read Online Gambling on the Bodyguard by Sarah Ballance - Free Book Online Page B

between rocks, around bends, each turn more breathtaking than the one before it.
    “Wait until the sun starts to set,” he said. “You’ll see how the park gets its name.”
    “You mean I don’t already?”
    “Not even close.”
    They walked a bit longer, eventually stopping at an outcropping with a view of the sun. Already, it colored the sky.
    He gestured toward the view, but he needn’t. She was already transfixed.
    “What you said last night about the mountains made me think of how I feel here,” he said. A breeze lifted a strand of her hair. He brushed back the errant piece. Smiled. “Just like you said, then and now. You can’t see it and not let it be a part of you.”
    She swallowed the lump that threatened her throat. She hadn’t imagined anyone else could understand what she felt, and she wouldn’t have thought it possible that the person who did could have been found in a place that was the exact opposite of hers—a place that could never be her home. They couldn’t have been more different, she and Jax, but the connection she felt to him suggested otherwise.
    So did the look in his eyes. They captured her, held her for a long moment before he spoke. “What are you running from out there, gorgeous?”
    “Not running. Just looking.” That old familiar ache returned, and she wondered, not for the first time, why she bothered with the search. Especially now. She’d always been so careful. Had waited to give herself to the man she was going to marry. In retrospect, she could see the relationship wouldn’t have worked, and not just because of the horrible way it ended. Maybe she tried too hard to make it something it wasn’t. In the end it hadn’t mattered, but the failure had left her confused. She thrived on caution. Planning. Every piece had been carefully arranged, only to have all those years of meticulous construction end in a broken heap. It probably wasn’t the best way to shape a partnership, but on paper it should have worked. If she couldn’t trust a man after three years, how long was she supposed to wait for things to fall apart before she believed they wouldn’t?
    She looked to Jax. He studied her with such intent, as if her response meant something. How was it possible his eyes seemed to hold so much promise? And what did it matter if they did? Anything they held wasn’t for her.
    Couldn’t be.
    She thought about his question. Telling him the truth back to the beginning—that her parents had checked out a long time ago, leaving a little girl to be raised by a string of nannies—had lonely and desperate written all over it. She hadn’t any siblings. For as long as she could remember, it had just been her. That a family had been all she wanted, and she’d wasted too many years wanting it with the wrong person. Now her relationship was over, her parents were off playing tourists in Outer Mongolia or somewhere equally absurd, and she’d been left utterly alone.
    Inexplicably, she didn’t feel that way now. But she wouldn’t admit that, either.
    “Have you found it yet?” he asked. “That thing you’re looking for?”
    She whittled back the hurt and confusion. The pain of so many lost years. It wasn’t anything on which she wanted to focus. Not with him filling the void in a way she hadn’t thought anyone could—especially not a man who had never been part of her plan. “Sometimes I think it’s less about what I’ve lost and more about what I’m finding along the way.”
    He looked away. His throat bobbed, and she knew he got it.
    “What about you?” she asked.
    “I don’t know. Sometimes I just get so damn tired of looking.”
    She reached for his hand, and his fingers immediately curled through hers. “Maybe sometimes you should stop looking,” she said. “Maybe, for a little while, just be .”
    He stroked her hand with his thumb. “That’s how it feels. Right now, with you.”
    They stood there for a long while after that, watching the sun crowd the