The Player Read Free

they’d leap to the wrong damned conclusion. Considering they’d both been riding his ass about his “serial” dating, it only stood to reason that they’d immediately suspect a woman problem.
    “Nobody’s pregnant, dammit,” he snapped. “How many times do I have to tell you bastards that I’m careful?” He exhaled loudly. “I know how to apply a friggin’ rubber, for chrissakes. It’s Garrett. He’s calling in my favor. ”
    Guy blinked. “Oh.”
    Payne stilled and his ice-blue gaze sharpened. “What does he want?”
    Jamie let out another long breath, uttered a short disbelieving laugh and shook his head. “He wants me to go to Maine for a week to guard his granddaughter.”
    “Guard his granddaughter?” Payne repeated. “Guard her from what?”
    That had been the first question he’d asked as well, and the answer he’d gotten had been irritatingly ambiguous. Not that he hadn’t taken andfollowed orders on less information. He’d been trained to obey, to trust in the authority of his superiors, and yet something about this felt… off. He’d tried to chalk it up to his new civilian mentality, but he suspected that this gut hunch had more to do with intuition than new programming.
    “Garrett says there’s evidence that a personal enemy of his might be targeting her.”
    Guy frowned. “Personal enemy?”
    “What sort of personal enemy?” Payne asked. “I mean, I don’t doubt that he’s got one—a man doesn’t get to his level without pissing people off. Still…” he added skeptically.
    Jamie couldn’t help scowling. “That’s just it. He wouldn’t say. Evidently he’s got someone in place through the weekend, but needs me to step in on Monday.”
    “We’ll have to rearrange some things,” Payne said, predictably jumping into logistics mode. “Guy and I will have to split your cases.”
    “It’s piss-poor timing, that’s for sure,” Jamie said, signaling the waitress for a beer. A midtown staple, Samuel’s Pub had quickly become their traditional beer and sandwich haunt. Good Irish whiskey, good prices, Braves decor. What morecould a guy want? Jamie muttered a hot oath. “Hell, some notice would have been nice.”
    Guy rocked back in his chair and grinned. “But that would be completely out of character for Garrett.”
    Too true, Jamie knew, but it didn’t change the fact that he’d be leaving his friends and partners in the lurch three months out of the gate in their new business venture. Thanks in part to all three of them, Ranger Security had taken off better than any one of them could have expected. Jamie inwardly grinned. Turns out hi-tech personal and professional security was in high demand—and quite lucrative.
    Thanks to Payne’s investment capital—though he seemed to resent his impressive portfolio at times, Payne had “come from money” as Jamie’s grandmother used to say—they’d secured top-of-the-line equipment and a prized office building in downtown Atlanta. The lower level housed the offices and the other two floors had been converted into apartments. Since he and Guy had no aversion to sharing space, they’d taken the second floor and Payne had moved into the loft, or the Tower, as they’d come to call it.
    Since Payne had taken on so much of the financialburden, it only seemed fair that he have a place to himself. Not that Jamie and Guy weren’t paying their way, but their money had come from a sizable mortgage whereas Payne had merely “transferred funds.” Regardless, provided business continued to grow, he and Guy should be operating in the black within a few years, and in his opinion, that was pretty damned good.
    “So the granddaughter is in Maine,” Guy remarked. “What does she do?”
    Ah, Jamie thought, inwardly wincing. Here came the fun part. He passed a hand over his face and braced himself for sarcasm. “She, er…She runs a de-stressing camp for burned out execs—Unwind, it’s called—and well, Garrett’s, uh…” He