She didn’t turn his way. “He paid you. I made sure you got paid. I told Will the only way I would come down here with you was if you got your full pay. I know you don’t watch over me for free.”

How could she? He’d tried to get them out of this position and she’d put them right back in. “That’s not fair.”

“No, not telling the woman you’re sleeping with that you’re on the payroll isn’t fair.”

“What would you have done?” he asked. “If I’d told you that I was your bodyguard. How would you have reacted?”

“We’ll never know now. I might have been perfectly reasonable.”

He stared straight ahead because that was utterly ridiculous. Nothing about her situation was reasonable.

She sighed. “I don’t know what I would have done. I probably would have wanted someone who wasn’t you.”

There was a problem with that scenario. “I wouldn’t have allowed anyone else to guard you.”

“According to Will, you were the only one available.”

“I wouldn’t have allowed anyone else to guard you.” At least he wasn’t going to lie to himself anymore. He couldn’t have handed her over to one of the other bodyguards.

“I want to talk about something else or nothing at all,” she said stubbornly. “So you didn’t think you would come home. Did you miss this place?”

He let the question settle over him, trying to shove out his irritation. “Yes, I missed it. I didn’t realize how much until now.”

“You didn’t come back for three whole years?” she asked. “You came home after the Navy though, right?”

“I did, but it wasn’t a good time. Zep was back, but he was sitting on Momma’s couch doing absolutely nothing with his life. Sera was pregnant. We had a fight one night and Momma told me if I hadn’t left it wouldn’t have fallen apart. She blamed me. Sera did, too. Zep barely looked up from his beer long enough to say good-bye when I left. I had an old friend in Dallas from the teams. I crashed at his place for my final surgery and then I got on at McKay-Taggart.”

“But then your cousin decides to sell out. That’s when you put your house on the market, found a highly lucrative job watching a moron, and now you’re coming home the conquering hero.”