“I’d have to say you nailed it.”
I beamed. “Admit it. You had the CD, didn’t you?”
“On repeat. It skipped when I drove over bumps in my first car and I still listened to it.”
“Of course you did. That was back when CDs were a precious commodity. Everyone had those tower shelves in their living rooms loaded with them. Imagine all those fuckers all over the bottom of the ocean right now.”
“Shit. I never thought of that.”
“Do you still have your CDs and your CD towers?”
“Nope. I can’t even remember what happened to them.”
“They became obsolete. Like the mullet.”
“I hear that’s coming back, though,” he said dryly.
“Don’t even think about it. You have great hair. And you’re way too gorgeous for that.”
He didn’t even move, but I felt it. He stiffened. It was like he caught himself having too good a time and reeled it back in.
“And what did DJ Summer listen to back in the days of the CD?” he asked, side-stepping the compliment.
“Oh, everything you can imagine, sweetheart. But CDs came and went. Vinyl is where it’s at, for life.”
He looked at me again. I waited for him to complain about me calling him sweetheart and politely advise me not to sexually harass him. But instead, he just looked into my eyes, and… wow.
It was like he was really looking at me for the first time or something.
Me.
Not the woman he was paid to protect.
It was a penetrating, direct look… and it went directly between my legs. I wondered what it would be like to be pinned beneath that look while he pinned me in bed…
He cleared his throat a little. “I noticed the records in your music room,” he said, completely side-stepping again. “It’s quite a collection.”
“Yes, it is. I find them all over the world and bring them back with me. I have more in storage downstairs.”
“Is that what all those bins are about?”
“Absolutely.”
I picked up my fork and tried to finish my food. My appetite was coming back.
But since I wasn’t talking, Ronan went silent again.
“So… what do you make of my home?” I asked him lightly. “Am I safe and secure yet?”
He looked at me. “Yes. You’re safe.”
I tried to read between the lines of what he was saying, and what he wasn’t saying, and that look on his face.
“You think I should’ve had security before this.”
“That was up to Brody,” he said simply.
“Your opinion on the matter is obvious.”
“It’s not just you. We’re putting security in place for your whole band.”
“I’m not as famous as my band,” I protested, again. “Ashley was the frontman of a successful rock band for almost a decade. I’m a DJ, and I’m nowhere near as well-known. Plus, I look different onstage.”
“Not that different,” he said.
Which made me wonder…
He said he’d never been to my shows.
Had he been searching me online? Looking at photos?
“But you realize Vancouver is pretty chill,” I pressed. “I know celebrities who come here specifically because they can go to a restaurant like a regular person and not be harassed and swarmed. As long as you keep it low-key, you can get away with that here. If I show up at some club in L.A. in full party gear, it might be a different story, and I’d be ready for it. Especially if I’m with someone like Ash.”
“Are you in public with him a lot?”
“Yes. We actually did a photo shoot a couple months ago, when Brody had his publicists announce that we were forming a band together. There was some buzz after that. People wanted to know if we were getting back together.” I rolled my eyes a little.
“Are you getting back together?”
“No, we’re not. I’m just saying, I know what it’s like to be swarmed. But my daily life isn’t that. I had to be a little more careful when I went out for a while, avoid the media, but it died down pretty quick.”
“While we’re on the subject,” Ronan said, pushing his plate away. “If you’re dating anyone, I need to be made aware.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “So you can run a criminal check on him?”
“Yes.”
“I was kidding.”
“I’m not.”
Okay… This whole thing was getting weirder by the hour.
Now I had to run my potential dates by my bodyguard first?
“There’s this thing called situational awareness,” he said evenly. Maybe he was picking up on my irritation and decided to side-step again. “You’ve probably used it without even knowing it, like when you knew the media was paying attention after that photo shoot. You scope out your surroundings and get more tuned in to what’s going on around you. You look for quick exit paths, places you could get trapped and accosted. I do it constantly. And you should be doing it whenever you meet new people, and when you potentially get into a dating situation. You’re mentally looking for warning signs, red flags that the guy could be trouble. For ways out.”
Okay, I did not love what he was implying.
“What do I need awareness for?” I challenged. “That’s what I have you for. Right?”
It was his job to keep me safe. It was not his job to tell me that I should’ve seen the signs that Blair was dangerous. That I should’ve known.
Like it was my fault he chose to creep on me or something?
“It’s something you can work on developing,” he said calmly. “When my clients learn to think in those terms, it goes a long way to avoiding situations that I have to pull them out of.”
Yeah. That made sense.
But… “I’m pretty good at trusting my own judgment with people,” I informed him. He had to know I wasn’t a total idiot. I met people all the time, and I had a pretty strong internal radar for weirdos. Or so I’d always thought… “Honestly… I’m kinda pissed that I didn’t see what Blair was about from the start.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong there, Summer,” he told me, just like he’d told me earlier today, in my
