“You have precisely three seconds to get the fuck off of him,” I warned before I’d even cleared the doorway. When I saw a strange man on top of Quinn on the floor, I had to hold myself back from beating the fucker to a pulp.
The asshole who’d gotten all up in Quinn’s personal space jumped up and started whining, but I didn’t look at him because I was busy assessing Quinn. He seemed uninjured and pissed off, which was excellent.
It wasn’t that I had any particular protective feelings about Quinn, of course. That would be absurd. But I couldn’t abide predators.
“I’m his client,” the preppy idiot bleated. “Right, Quinn?”
Quinn hesitated.
“Not anymore you’re not,” I decided. Nobody needed to work with someone who made them feel unsafe.
But Quinn contradicted me— because the man freaking lived to contradict me.
“Trey is right,” he said firmly. “He really did trip over a box of candles. As long as we all remember our roles from now on and act professionally, we shouldn’t have a problem.”
The look he gave me dared me to push the issue, and I rolled my eyes. Quinn clearly didn’t understand the concept of self-preservation.
The guy—Trey—stammered some more and tried to sneak around me to leave the room, but before he did, he turned his beady little eyes up at me. “Are you… do you… work for Mr. Taffet?”
I snorted. “No, I’m not Quinn’s employee. I—” I was what? His bodyguard? His friend? Neither of those options would keep this dude from putting his hands on Quinn. Instead, I went with the most outrageous claim I could think of.
“I’m his fiancé.” I leaned toward him and almost gagged on the overpowering scent of Invictus cologne. “And if you touch him again, Trey, losing your wedding planner is going to be the least of your worries.”
As soon as the word “fiancé” winged its merry way out of my mouth, I tried so hard to suck it back in, I made a choking sound.
Quinn realized this, of course, because he was an observant fucker like that, and his eyes suddenly changed from shocked to sparkling with mischief. “Yes. Yes. Mr. Dunwoody, please excuse my fiancé as he gets emotional sometimes. Isn’t that right, Snickerdoodle?”
Ugh. The man knew how I felt about pet names.
I opened my mouth to say something when a woman’s voice squealed from behind me. I spun around and moved swiftly to block the newcomer from Quinn. How long had it been since someone had gotten the drop on me like that?
“Easy,” Quinn said softly. His hand landed gently on my back.
“Quinn! I didn’t know you were engaged too!” The young woman standing in the doorway was tall and made even taller by the high heels she wore. Her dark, wavy hair cascaded artfully down either side of her face, across her shoulders, and over her chest. She wore a tight beige dress and carried a designer purse over one forearm. “Trey, honey, did you hear? Quinn and I can be bridal buddies! We can have wedding-planning double dates! How fun will that be?”
Oh God.
What had I done?
“Marissa.” Quinn stepped forward and plastered on a big smile. “So nice to meet you in person. You’re even more beautiful than in your engagement photo.”
She made a little wiggling gesture of excitement. “Introduce me to your fiancé. He’s so cute!”
Cute? Cute? I was a fucking soldier. I ran a global security firm and protected high-value targets around the world. I’d infiltrated heavily armed compounds and set off incendiary devices in some of the worst hellscapes on earth. Cute?
I needed to get the hell out of here and meet up with my team to find the Horn. How did Quinn do this for a living? Sitting through a bridal consultation and dealing with enthusiastic brides was the absolute definition of hell as far as I was concerned. I’d almost rather have been back in Afghanistan.
“Isn’t he the dreamiest?” Quinn said with the voice of a cheerleader. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not when he laced his arm through mine. “Marissa, this is Champ… Percy Champion. Puddin’ Pop, this is Marissa Drakes. Her family lives in Nashville but also owns Drakes Farm out past Layfield Crossroads. Oh, and this is her fiancé, Trey Dunwoody.”
I nodded politely at Marissa before turning to Trey with a warning glare. Quinn bumped me with his elbow.
“Right. Well. Nice to meet you. I should probably leave you to it, Pookie Pie—” I began, deciding I needed to fight fire with fire when it came to these names. I reached over to the hook on the wall where Herc’s extra leash lived… er, where it was temporarily located.
“Yes, gosh, don’t let us keep you,” Trey said in a relieved rush that set my teeth on edge.
“You know what?” I put the leash back on the hook. There was no way in hell I was leaving Quinn here with this guy, especially when he seemed so unaware of his own safety. “Now that I think about it, I should sit in on this meeting. Quinn’s always wanting me to take a more active role in the wedding plans, aren’t you, Possum?”