The Men With the Golden Cuffs(18)

Lara laughed. “Oh, no. Did they catch you doing that crazy dance thing you do when you can’t quite figure out an action scene? Or did they catch you with the ménage dolls?”

She sometimes used dolls in order to get down the physicality of a love scene. She’d rapidly discovered that male dolls were deeply inflexible, so she had to use three ballerina dolls to make things work. Luckily, they were hidden in her desk drawer. “The dancing thing.”

It made her weird. She knew that, but she’d given up on finding a man who would understand her a long time back. Her friends got that she thought better while singing and dancing. They ignored it when she talked to herself because she was working on dialogue and made crazy hand gestures. They didn’t care that she non-sequitured her way through life because she had a million ideas going at once.

They didn’t make fun of her.

“The dancing thing is cute,” Lara assured her. “Ian told me that these guys know what they’re doing. Adam Miles and Jacob Dean are former Special Forces. They worked with Ian’s brother, Sean. He speaks very highly of them. They’ve been working in the private sector for five years. They’re the best in the business. And this is only until we figure out who this asshole is. I promise Ian is working on that, too.”

The cops hadn’t done much. At least if they were paying these guys, they might actually look into it. She didn’t have a problem hiring a security firm. But she did have a problem with Adam and Jake. “They’re already making fun of me.”

It was stupid. She was a twenty-eight-year-old woman. She shouldn’t give a crap what people thought, but it hurt. She’d gotten the crap kicked out of her about a million times since she’d started writing erotic romance. She’d thought she could be happy and proud telling everyone that she was a published writer. Her aunt had asked when she was going to write a real book. Her husband had read it and promptly divorced her because he hadn’t meant to marry a woman of her obviously low character. She couldn’t even find writer friends outside of her genre. The one writers’ group she’d gone to had asked her to leave because they didn’t want her to tarnish the chapter’s image. She was sick to death of being made fun of.

Lara’s voice turned cajoling. Serena had to smile because she’d heard Lara use the same tone on authors who went all diva on her. “What did they do? Look, sweetie, guys don’t understand romance. I know your covers are salacious, but they sell books. You can’t expect some straight guy to get it.”

“No, Lara. They started talking about Doms.” She could still hear her ex-husband berating her for wanting to explore BDSM. He’d called her everything from a freak to a whore. The last thing she needed was two bodyguards who thought they could look down on her.

There was a long pause. “What exactly did they say?”

She felt her whole body flush. She looked around the corner to make sure they weren’t listening in. Adam was still sitting in her desk chair, drinking her damn wine. He looked gorgeous. His dark hair fell perfectly over sculpted features. He spoke quietly to Jake, who she couldn’t see.

“Adam made a crack about Jacob spanking me if I didn’t watch my potty mouth.”

Lara’s laugh came over loud and clear. “Well, you can cuss a blue streak.”

“He said the big bad Dom wouldn’t like it. I’m sick of this shit, Lara. I’m sick of men who make fun of me because I’m not some perfect little vanilla princess.”

Lara sighed. “Okay, sweetie. I’ll talk to Ian. I’m sorry. He’s a good friend. I thought he could help. Have you talked to Storm about this?”

Storm was the Dom Serena had been talking with for a couple of months. She’d only recently met him, but he was an incredibly open man. Maybe she should talk to him. He might have some connections. She turned away and walked to the back of her bedroom. “I have a meeting with Master Storm in a couple of days. I’ll talk to him.”

“All right.” Serena could hear Lara’s tiredness. She wished she wasn’t the cause of it. “I’m sorry. I thought it was the best I could do. Please don’t throw them out. They really will protect you until we can get someone else in place. Just go to bed and don’t talk to them.”

She hated the thought that she wouldn’t see them again. She really was an idiot. They were jerks who had thrown her out of their office, broken into her house, and made fun of her work. And she was hurt at the idea of them walking out of her life.

She really was a masochist.

She should probably talk to Master Storm about that, too.