Contents
Title
A Note from the Authors
Character List
1. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
2. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
3. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
4. JACK HIGHLAND
5. JACK HIGHLAND
6. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
7. JACK HIGHLAND
8. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
9. JACK HIGHLAND
10. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
11. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
12. JACK HIGHLAND
13. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
14. JACK HIGHLAND
15. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
16. JACK HIGHLAND
17. JACK HIGHLAND
18. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
19. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
20. JACK HIGHLAND
21. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
22. JACK HIGHLAND
23. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
24. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
25. JACK HIGHLAND
26. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
27. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
28. JACK HIGHLAND
29. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
30. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
31. JACK HIGHLAND
32. JACK HIGHLAND
33. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
34. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
35. JACK HIGHLAND
36. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
37. JACK HIGHLAND
38. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
39. JACK HIGHLAND
40. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
41. JACK HIGHLAND
42. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
43. JACK HIGHLAND
44. OSCAR OLIVEIRA
Epilogue
Banks Moretti - Key West House
Also by Krista & Becca
About the Authors
Acknowledgments
Charming Like Us Copyright © 2020 by K.B. Ritchie
First Edition - Digital
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced or transmitted in any capacity without written permission by the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.
This book is a work of fiction. Any names, places, characters, resemblance to events or persons, living or dead, are coincidental and originate from the authors’ imagination and are used fictitiously.
Cover image © Stocksy
Book cover design by Twin Cove Designs
www.kbritchie.com
A Note from the Authors
Charming Like Us is the seventh book in the Like Us Series. Even though the series changes POVs throughout, to understand events that took place in the previous novels, the series should be read in its order of publication.
Charming Like Us should be read after Headstrong Like Us.
LIKE US SERIES READING ORDER
1. Damaged Like Us
2. Lovers Like Us
3. Alphas Like Us
4. Tangled Like Us
5. Sinful Like Us
6. Headstrong Like Us
7. Charming Like Us
8. Wild Like Us
9. Fearless Like Us
10. Infamous Like Us
11. Misfits Like Us
12. Unlucky Like Us
Character List
Not all characters in this list will make an appearance in the book, but most will be mentioned.
Ages represent the age of the character at the beginning of the book. Some characters will be older when they’re introduced, depending on their birthday.
THE OLIVEIRAS
Rodrigo & Sônia Oliveira
Oscar – 32
Quinn – 22
Joana – 19
THE HIGHLANDS
Jack Sr. & Eleonor Highland
Jack – 27
Jesse – 17
THE FAMOUS ONES
The Cobalts
Richard Connor Cobalt & Rose Calloway
Jane – 24
Charlie – 21
Beckett – 21
Eliot – 20
Tom – 19
Ben – 17
Audrey – 14
The Hales
Loren Hale & Lily Calloway
Maximoff – 24
Luna – 19
Xander – 16
Kinney – 14
The Meadows
Ryke Meadows & Daisy Calloway
Sullivan – 21
Winona – 15
THE SECURITY TEAM
These are the bodyguards that protect the Cobalts, Hales, and Meadows.
Kitsuwon Securities Inc.
Security Force Omega
Akara Kitsuwon (boss) – 27
Thatcher Moretti (lead) – 29
Banks Moretti – 29
Farrow Keene – 29
Quinn Oliveira – 22
Oscar Oliveira – 32
Paul Donnelly – 27
Price Kepler’s Triple Shield Services
Security Force Epsilon
Sinclair (lead) – 40s
Ian Wreath – 30s
Vance Wreath – 20s
O’Malley – 27
…and more
Security Force Alpha
Price Kepler (lead) – 40s
…and more
1
OSCAR OLIVEIRA
Ten times a day, I question why I’m the bodyguard to Charlie Keating Cobalt. The sun just set, and I’m already at number eleven. Why me?
Because I can keep up.
Because despite the fact that he’s actively trying to lose me in a crowd that’s fifty people deep, I’m still six feet behind him. I could lunge and grab his thin, billowing white button-down, untucked from his black jeans.
No one has noticed the famous twenty-one-year-old yet.
Thanks to the fact that Charlie is moving through a crowd of tourists who are all too enamored with the glittering Manhattan skyscrapers. They’re too unaware that a celebrity just passed them by, with his unkempt, sandy-brown hair that takes flight with the summer wind.
Charlie veers to the left, suddenly, and his head disappears behind a group of taller men. If it were my first day on the job, I’d think he was trying to lose me in the crowd. But it’s not my first day. Not even my second.
I’ve been Charlie’s bodyguard for over five years.
So I don’t think it.
I know he’s trying to lose me.
Here’s an annoying fact: His success rate is about 50%.
Here’s a less annoying fact: Before me, his success rate was 100%.
Charlie’s previous bodyguards were making him look like a gold-star Houdini. They had zero shot to catch up to him. If Charlie wanted to disappear, he’d vanish into thin air.
With me, he has to try a little fucking harder, and that’s why I’m still on his detail after all these years. Can’t lie, it’s not rose petals and holy water over here. It’s never stopping. Not for a second. It’s stress on stress on stress, and I’m terrified of the day I lose this.
Being his bodyguard.
Because it’ll be like going from a hundred million miles an hour to being glued to the ground. I’ve been at Charlie’s speed for so long, I don’t know how to stop anymore.
I watch him near a department store, and instead of following his footsteps, I keep walking ahead with the throngs. Officially, I lose sight of him. It’s a calculated risk, one with opportunity cost.
And as I make the decision, I know exactly what it’s going to cost me…and my client.
I hear overwhelmed, elated, shrill screams of a young girl.
“Ohmygod Charlie COBALT!”
Her high-pitched “oh my gods” are probably echoing down the New Jersey Turnpike. Can I blame her? I grew up thinking the Cobalts walked on water. All three famous families are considered American royalty, but the Cobalts are the gods among the princes, and now that I protect them, I still think it.
The difference is, I’m not a teenager envious of their flawless intellect and their arm-in-arm impenetrable bonds…their closeness that made my family life seem unspooled and messy.
Because I’m older now, and I’m an incredibly intelligent motherfucker. And I’ve come face-to-face with the Cobalts, who are just as messy, just as dysfunctional, just as chaotic as my family still is.
And it made me love the Cobalt Empire even more.
So they still walk on water, but I’m one of several men who picks their asses out of a Great Lake when they slip and begin to drown.
Call me The Pro.
The media already does.
More screaming blisters the New York
