Page 5 of Redemption

Nate’s expression was full of pity and also…understanding. “They’d sail on the same boat as you. Your boat.”

I let out a strangled cry. I couldn’t imagine sharing my boat with anyone apart from the men in this room or my best friend, Greer, especially for that length of time. I straightened. “It’s too small. They’ll only get in the way.”

“It’s a thirty-five-foot sailboat,” Graham said. “You have the space, even if it might be a bit cramped.”

“Ha!” I pointed at him, childish as it was. “So, you admit it.”

Internally, I rolled my eyes. So maybe I wasn’t acting like the mature senior vice president of a hotel empire that I was, but sometimes my brothers brought out the worst in me.

“Okay,” Nate interjected. “Let’s pretend for a minute this was Brooklyn we were talking about.”

My chest squeezed, and rage surged through my veins at the idea of anyone threatening my niece.

“Would you be okay with her going on a sailboat, alone, under these circumstances?”

“No,” I admitted begrudgingly. “But the guest cabin is tiny.” The perfect size for my twelve-year-old niece but not anyone much larger.

“They’ll live,” Nate said. “Or you can rent or buy a bigger boat for the trip.”

“You can borrow my yacht if you’d like,” Knox offered.

He didn’t get it. None of them did. That was the point—I loved my boat. I could sail it single-handedly. I didn’t need anyone else.

I’d been sailing since almost before I could walk. My grandfather had loved sailing, and it had been our thing. When I was barely eight, I’d won a sunfish sailing race. Before college, I’d considered attempting to circumnavigate the globe. Sailing was in my blood.

It was my escape. My solace.

“We can even try to find someone with sailing experience if that’ll make the idea more palatable,” Nate said.

“It won’t,” I muttered. But I could tell they weren’t going to be dissuaded.

As if to hammer home the point, Graham said, “The board wanted to put you under round-the-clock protection. Police and private security. And they’d have the votes to do it, but I talked them out of it.”

“Ugh.” I threw my hands in the air. “Fine. One bodyguard. That’s it.”

“Excellent.” Knox grinned. And from the look the four of them shared, I wondered if that had been their goal all along.

I hung my head, resigned to my fate. Hopefully my bodyguard—whoever they were—wouldn’t be as annoying and overbearing as my brothers.

CHAPTER TWO

“How are things at the Crawford residence?” Vaughn asked from across his desk at the LA office of Hudson Security.

I lifted a shoulder, still trying to hide my surprise that I’d been summoned to the office. We’d already had our weekly debriefing with the team, but Vaughn had asked me to come in alone. “Good.”

“Good. Wedding plans going well? How big a team do you think you’ll need?”

I glanced toward the windows, making some rough estimates based on what I knew so far. “It’s a pretty big guest list. Many high-profile.”

The principal, Nate Crawford, was a huge celebrity. Actor and producer. His engagement to Emerson Thorne had nearly broken the internet and given me a damn heart attack.

That said, I hadn’t been all that surprised. By the engagement—sure. But the fact that Nate and Emerson were attracted to each other had been obvious from the start.

She was a famous Olympic athlete. And the two of them together had the internet salivating for details. Everyone was invested in their love story. Their wedding. Everything about them.

If it was exhausting for me at times, being on the periphery, I couldn’t imagine how they handled it. But they did—with grace and generosity.

“I figured,” he mused, running a hand over his chin. “It’ll be a logistical nightmare. But that’s why they hired us. We can handle it.”