You are being provided with a book chapter by chapter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chapter. After reading the chapter, 1. shorten the chapter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any important nouns in the chapter. 3. Do not translate the original language. 4. Keep the same style as the original chapter, keep it consistent throughout the chapter. Your reply must comply with all four requirements, or it’s invalid.
I will provide the chapter now.

3
BRIDGET
ONE OF THE WORST THINGS ABOUT HAVING A ROUND-THE-CLOCK BODY-
guard was living with them. It hadn’t been an issue with Booth be-
cause we’d gotten along so well, but living in close quarters with
Rhys put on me on edge.
Suddenly, my house seemed too small, and everywhere I looked,
Rhys was there.
Drinking coffee in the kitchen. Stepping out of the shower. Work-
ing out in the backyard, his muscles flexing and his skin gleaming
with sweat.
It all felt strangely domestic in a way it hadn’t felt with Booth,
and I didn’t like it one bit.
“Aren’t you hot in those clothes?” I asked one unseasonably
warm day as I watched Rhys do push-ups.
Even though it was fall, the temperature hovered in the high sev-
enties, and a bead of sweat trickled down my neck despite my light
cotton dress and the ice-cold lemonade in my hands.
Rhys must be roasting in his black shirt and workout shorts.
“Trying to get me to take my shirt off?” He continued his
pushups, not sounding the least bit winded.
Warmth that had nothing to do with the weather spread across
my cheeks. “You wish.” It wasn’t the most inspired answer, but it
was all I could think of.
Honestly, I was curious about seeing Rhys shirtless. Not because I
wanted to sneak a peek at his abs—which I grudgingly admitted had
to be fantastic if the rest of his body was anything to go by—but be-
cause he seemed so determined not to be shirtless. Even when he left
the bathroom after a shower, he was fully dressed.
Maybe he was uncomfortable getting half-naked in front of a
client, but I had a feeling not much discomfited Rhys Larsen. It had
to be something else. An embarrassing tattoo, maybe, or a strange
skin condition that only affected his torso.
Rhys finished his pushups and moved on to the pull-up bar. “You
gonna keep ogling me, or you got something I can help you with,
princess?”
The warmth intensified. “I wasn’t ogling you. I was secretly pray-
ing for you to get heatstroke. If you do, I’m not helping you. I have…
a book to read.”
Dear Lord, what am I saying? I didn’t make sense even to myself.
After our moment of solidarity at The Crypt two weeks ago,
Rhys and I had settled right back into our familiar pattern of snark
and sarcasm, which I hated, because I wasn’t a typically snarky and
sarcastic person.
A shadow of a smirk filled the corners of Rhys’s mouth, but it
disappeared before it blossomed into something real. “Good to
know.”
By now, I was sure I was beet red, but I lifted my chin and reen-
tered the house with as much dignity as I could muster.
Let Rhys bake in the sun. I hoped he did get heatstroke. Maybe
then, he wouldn’t have enough energy to be such an ass.
Sadly, he didn’t, and he had plenty of energy left to be an ass.
“How’s the book?” he drawled later, when he’d finished his
workout and I’d grabbed the closest book I could find before he en-
tered the living room.
“Riveting.” I tried to focus on the page instead of the way Rhys’s
sweat-dampened shirt clung to his torso.
Six-pack abs for sure. Maybe even an eight-pack. Not that I was
counting.
“Sure seems that way.” Rhys’s face remained impassive, but I
could hear the mocking bent in his voice. He walked to the bath-
room, and without looking back, he added, “By the way, princess,
the book is upside down.”
I slammed the hardcover shut, my skin blazing with
embarrassment.
God, he was insufferable. A gentleman wouldn’t point something
like that out, but Rhys Larsen was no gentleman. He was the bane of
my existence.
Unfortunately, I was the only person who thought so. Everyone
else found his grumpiness charming, including my friends and the
people at the shelter, so I couldn’t even commiserate with them over
his bane-of-my-existence-ness.
“What’s the deal with your new bodyguard?” Wendy, one of the
other long-term volunteers at Wags & Whiskers, whispered. She
snuck a peek at where Rhys sat in the corner like a rigid statue of
muscles and tattoos. “He’s got that whole strong, silent thing going
on. It’s hot.”
“You say that, but you’re not the one who has to live with him.”
It was two days after the upside-down book debacle, and Rhys
and I hadn’t exchanged any words since except good morning and
good night.
I didn’t mind. It made it easier to pretend he didn’t exist.
Wendy laughed. “I’ll gladly change places with you. My room-
mate keeps microwaving fish and stinking up the kitchen, and she
looks nothing like your bodyguard.” She tightened her ponytail and
stood. “Speaking of changing places, I have to head out for study
group. Do you have everything you need?”
I nodded. I’d taken over Wendy’s shift enough times by now to
have the routine down pat.
After she left, silence descended, so thick it draped around me
like a cloak.
Rhys didn’t move from his corner spot. We were alone, but his
eyes roved around the playroom like he expected an assassin to pop
out from behind the cat condo at any minute.
“Does it get exhausting?” I scratched Meadow, the shelter’s new-
est cat, behind the ears.
“What?”
“Being on all the time.” Constantly alert, searching for danger. It
was his job, but I’d never seen Rhys relax, not even when it was just
the two of us at home.
“No.”
“You know you can give more than one-word answers, right?”
“Yes.”
He was impossible.
“Thank God I have you, sweetie,” I said to Meadow. “At least
you can carry on a decent conversation.”
She meowed in agreement, and I smiled. I swore cats were
smarter than humans sometimes.
There was another long stretch of silence before Rhys surprised
me by asking, “Why do you volunteer at an animal shelter?”
I was so startled by the fact he’d initiated a non-security-related
conversation I froze mid-pet. Meadow meowed again, this time in
protest.
I resumed my petting and debated how much to tell Rhys before
settling on the simple answer. “I like animals. Hence, animal
shelter.”
“Hmm.”
My spine stiffened at the skepticism in his voice. “Why do you
ask?”
Rhys shrugged. “Just doesn’t seem like the kinda thing you’d like
to do in your free time.”
I didn’t have to ask to know what types of things he thought I
liked doing in my free time. Most people looked at me and made as-
sumptions based on my appearance and background, and yes, some
of them were true. I enjoyed shopping and parties as much as the
next girl, but that didn’t mean I didn’t care about other things too.
“It’s amazing how much insight you have into my personality
after knowing me for only a month,” I said coolly.
“I do my research, princess.” It was the only way Rhys addressed
me. He refused to call me by my first name or Your Highness. In turn,
I refused to call him anything except Mr. Larsen. I wasn’t sure if it
accomplished anything, since he gave no indication it bothered him,
but it satisfied the petty part of me. “I know more about you than
you think.”
“But not why I volunteer at an animal shelter. So, clearly, you
need to brush up on your research skills.”
He flicked those steely gray eyes in my direction, and I thought I
spotted a hint of amusement before the walls crashed down again.
“Touché.” He hesitated, then added reluctantly, “You’re different
from what I expected.”
“Why? Because I’m not a superficial airhead?” My voice chilled
another degree as I tried to cover up the unexpected sting of his
words.
“I never said you were a superficial airhead.”
“You implied it.”
Rhys grimaced. “You’re not the first royal I’ve guarded,” he said.
“You’re not even the third or fourth. They all acted similarly, and I
expected you to do the same. But you’re not…”
I arched an eyebrow. “I’m not…?”
A small smile ghosted across his face so fast I almost missed it.
“A superficial airhead.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed.
Me, laughing at something Rhys Larsen said. Hell must’ve iced
over.
“My mom was a huge animal lover,” I said, surprising myself. I
hadn’t planned on talking about my mother with Rhys, but I felt
compelled to take advantage of the lull in our normally antagonistic
relationship. “I got the gene from her. But the palace didn’t allow
pets, and the only way I could regularly interact with animals was
by volunteering at shelters.”
I held out my hand and smiled when Meadow pawed at it like
she was giving me a low five. “I enjoy it, but I also do it because…” I
searched for the right words. “It makes me feel closer to my mom.
The love for animals is something only we shared. The rest of my
family likes them fine, but not in the same way we do. Or did.”
I didn’t know what prompted my admission. Was it because I
wanted to prove I wasn’t volunteering as a PR stunt? Why did I care
what Rhys thought of me, anyway?
Or maybe it was because I needed to talk about my mom to
someone who hadn’t known her. In Athenberg, I couldn’t mention
her without people shooting me pitying looks, but Rhys was as calm
and unruffled as ever.
“I understand,” he said.
Two simple words, yet they crawled inside me and soothed a
part of me I hadn’t known needed soothing.
Our eyes met, and the air developed another layer of thickness.
Dark, mysterious, piercing. Rhys had the kind of eyes that saw
straight into a person’s soul, stripping past layers of elaborate lies to
reach the ugly truths underneath.
How many of my truths could he see? Could he see the girl be-
neath the mask, the one who’d carried a decades-long burden she
was terrified to share, the one who’d killed—
“Master! Spank me, Master!” Leather chose that moment to let
loose one of his notoriously inappropriate outbursts. “Please spank
me!”
The spell shattered as quickly as it had been cast.
Rhys flicked his gaze away, and I looked down, my breath gust-
ing out in a mixture of relief and disappointment.
“Mas—” Leather quieted when Rhys leveled it with a glare. The
bird ruffled its feathers and hopped around its cage before settling
into a nervous silence.
“Congratulations,” I said, trying to shake off the unsettling elec-
tricity from a moment ago. “You might be the first person who’s ever
gotten Leather to stop mid-sentence. You should adopt him.”
“Fuck no. I don’t do foul-mouthed animals.”
We stared at each other for a second before a small giggle slipped
from my mouth and the iron curtain shielding his eyes lifted enough
for me to spot another glimmer of humor.
We didn’t talk again for the rest of my shift, but the mood be-
tween us had lightened enough that I’d convinced myself Rhys and I
could have a functional working relationship.
I wasn’t sure if it was optimism or delusion, but my brain always
latched onto the smallest evidence things weren’t so bad to cope
with discomfort.
The wind nipped at the bare skin on my face and neck as we
walked home after my shift. Rhys and I had fought over whether to
walk or drive, but in the end, even he had to admit it would be silly
to drive somewhere so close.
“Are you excited to visit Eldorra?” I asked. We were leaving for
Athenberg in a few days for winter break, and Rhys had mentioned
it would be his first time in the country.
I’d hoped to build on our earlier flash of camaraderie, but I’d
misjudged because Rhys’s face shut down faster than a house party
raided by cops.
“I’m not going there for vacation, princess.” He said there like I
was forcing him to go to a prison camp, not a place Travel + Leisure
had named the ninth-best city in the world to visit.
“I know you’re not going for vacation.” I tried and failed to keep
the annoyance out of my voice. “But you’ll have free ti—”
The high-pitched squeal of tires ripped through the air. My brain
didn’t have time to process the sound before Rhys pushed me into a
nearby alleyway and pressed me tight against the wall with his gun
drawn and his body covering mine.
My pulse kicked into high gear, both at the sudden spike of
adrenaline and the proximity to him. He radiated heat and tension
from every inch of his big, muscled frame, and it wrapped around
me like a cocoon as a car sped past blasting music and leaking
laughter out of its half-open windows.
Rhys’s heartbeat thumped against my shoulder blades, and we
stayed frozen in the alleyway long after the music faded and the
only sound left was our heavy breathing.
“Mr. Larsen,” I said quietly. “I think we’re okay.”
He didn’t move. I was trapped between him and the brick, two
immovable walls shielding me from the world. He’d braced one
hand protectively against the wall next to my head, and he stood so
close I could feel every sculpted ridge and contour of his body
against mine.
Another long beat passed before Rhys re-holstered his gun and
turned his head to look at me.
“You sure you’re okay?” His voice was deep and gruff, and his
eyes searched me for injuries even though nothing had happened to
me.
“Yes. The car took a turn too fast. That’s all.” I let out a nervous
laugh, my skin too hot for comfort beneath his fierce perusal. “I was
more startled by you throwing me into the alley.”
“That’s why we should’ve driven.” He stepped back, taking his
heat with him, and cool air rushed to fill the void. I shivered, wish-
ing I’d worn a thicker sweater. It was suddenly too cold. “You’re too
open and unprotected walking around like this. That could’ve been a
drive-by.”
I almost laughed at the thought. “I don’t think so. Cats will fly
before there’s a drive-by in Hazelburg.” It was one of the safest
towns in the country, and most of the students didn’t even own cars.
Rhys didn’t look impressed by my analogy. “How many times do
I have to tell you? It only takes once. No more walking to and from
the shelter from now on.”
“It was literally nothing. You’re overreacting,” I said, my annoy-
ance returning full force.
His expression turned to granite. “It is my job to think of every-
thing that could go wrong. If you don’t like it, fire me. Until then, do