Free Anabel Unraveled by Amanda Romine Lynch

smoothie, and I sipped it in silence as he walked me back. I kept looking at him, puzzled. “What do you do for my brother again?”
    He caught my eye briefly, and then looked straight ahead. “I’m a bodyguard.”
    “Are you Secret Service?”
    Matt looked down. “I was. Now I’m private.” He gently slipped his arm around my shoulders to guide me away from an oncoming mob. “We should get you back into the hearing. There aren’t quite so many onlookers in there.”
    “Thank goodness for that,” I proclaimed. “A much smaller audience to see me make an idiot of myself.”
    He raised an eyebrow. I continued, “It’s bad enough that I’m making poor Sam relive this again, but—”
    “Sam can take care of himself. Just tell the truth, Anabel. It will be fine.”
    I nodded, and then smiled at him. “Thanks. It’s nice to have a friend. Even one that my brother has to pay for.”
    He laughed then, and I was pleased as I sat back down next to Sam, whose color had returned. “I’m sorry I left you like that,” he told me.
    “I’m sorry I pained you like that,” I offered.
    “It’s because I care about you,” he said.
    “I know,” I returned. “But this is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better, and you know that.”
    He nodded, and we both looked up as Jared stood to tell his side of the story.
     

Chapter 7—Jared
    After Anabel left me, I nearly lost control. Watching her retreating figure, I kicked a chair in frustration. I was incredibly mad at her display of . . . well, what was that? I turned and leaned against the rail, breathing heavily, until I had pulled myself together.
    Sam had totally underestimated her. If he knew what she was doing, he’d lose it. “Who does she think she is?” I muttered aloud. If she thought she could get away with that, she was gravely mistaken. How dare she pretend she was this sweet, innocent, little girl, and then turn around and behave like that?
    I’m not going to sit here and claim to be an expert on morality, but I’ve never pretended to be something I’m not. Anabel knew what I was, she’d said it herself.
    She, on the other hand, had fooled me, and for that matter, her brother. It’s no wonder her dad wanted to lock her up. In my mind, she was as bad as I was. Worse.
    But even as I decided that, I also felt furious at myself, and all sorts of recollections of how Sam had explicitly told me how much he trusted me with his sister’s welfare were running through my head. I could just imagine explaining the whole thing to him. I did not do this. She did this. I just came here to do a job, and she got mad because I was going through her desk to make sure her father hadn’t bugged her room. Sam hadn’t been kidding about her temper. She had screamed at me and thrown me out of there before I knew what was going on.
    That wasn’t what bothered me though. The worst part was she had gotten under my skin, and I had never allowed that to happen before. She wasn’t even the sort of girl I would normally go after—if I had seen Anabel on the street, I would’ve just kept walking. No. I knew it then. She was off limits, and that’s what this was about. Nothing more than a reaction to her brother telling me to leave her alone. It’s not like she was special. She was pretty, and rather smart, but there were ten million other girls like that in the DC area alone. It was obvious that I wanted her because my every instinct was to stay away.
    There would be no more of this, I told myself. Just do your job.
    Needless to say, I immediately took a very cold shower.
    I avoided Anabel for the rest of the afternoon. When I arrived to dinner that night she had put away the sexy white dress in favor of something much more puritan. Part of her hair was pulled back and the rest flowed around her face, making her look softer and sweeter than she had earlier. I thought I had my temper under control, but I got annoyed when she refused to make eye contact with