Her Dirty Bodyguards

The city’s hottest bodyguards. Deadly. Fearless. Gorgeous as hell. And assigned to protect… me.
Cal watches over me with… vigilance.
Dexter is an amazing… shot. And Thorn is talented with… his hands.
Just go on about your day, they say. Pretend we’re not there.
But how could I ignore the three hottest men I’d ever laid eyes on?
It’s true, I need them to stay alive.
And when I realize they are watching me a little more closely than they have to, it seems like it’s time to have some fun.

The Men at Work Collection. Read in any order. Just choose your favorite working man!

Her Dirty Rockers
Her Dirty Teachers
Her Dirty Doctors
Her Dirty Bodyguards
Her Dirty Bartenders
Her Dirty Ranchers
Her Dirty Mafia
Her Dirty Mountain Men
Her Dirty Soldiers
Her Dirty Builders
Her Dirty CEOs
Her Dirty Jocks
Her Dirty Archeologists
Her Dirty Mechanics
Her Dirty Detectives
This hot, over-the-top romance includes sexy working men with a penchant for pursuing and protecting the women who give them a run for their money. If you love outrageously naughty stories as a way to indulge your not-so-secret bad girl side, this is for you.

“You come very highly recommended.”
I smiled humbly.
“Tell me, have you cleaned for many other families?” 
“Oh yes. So many,” I lied enthusiastically.
Was this woman kidding? I didn’t even clean my own apartment. And it wasn’t a fraction of the size of the sprawling Upper East Side two-story apartment I was currently standing in.
You know how rare two-story apartments are in Manhattan? my BFF Beebie had asked when trying to sell me on the cleaning job.
No, I didn’t know. And I didn’t care. I wouldn’t have wanted to clean someone’s home if it were painted in fucking gold. 
Which Amalia von Malsen’s home very well could be. I hadn’t gotten past the foyer yet.
“Ah, here he is,” my new employer said, her polite, nice-to-meet-you smile morphing into something entirely different as she tilted her head demurely and bit her lower lip.
I followed her gaze to find a tall man, gorgeous, of course, because what else would they have in a home like this, heading toward me, his dress shoes clicking on the marble floor and his sport jacket flapping behind him.
Had god ever made a better-looking couple people? 
She looked up at him adoringly.
“Apologies for being late, ma’am,” he said to her.
Was that how he talked to his wife?
Ew.
And what was that lump under the right side of his jacket? People didn’t carry pagers anymore did they?
Unless he was a drug dealer? Is that how they got this place?
“Lillian, this is our head of family security, Callum Deverall.” She purred as if she’d designed the man herself.
Oh. Not a husband. An employee.
Like me.
And um, that pager? Maybe a firearm?
“Hello, Lillian,” he said, looking me up and down, his impossibly chiseled jawline shifting like he was on high alert. 
As he sized me up, I wished I’d worn something nicer than my H&M skinny jeans and Converse Chucks. By contrast, Amalia looked like she’d floated out of the pages of Harper’s Bazaar. But I guess that’s how you dress when you don’t have to clean your own home.
Security took another step closer to me. “I hope you don’t mind, but we need to pat you down before you can enter the von Malsen home any further.”
Nobody told me about this part.
I tried to casually laugh, but it came out more like a choking sound. “You’re not serious, are you?”
Amalia’s smiled faltered, her face growing dark. But only for a moment. She was clearly practiced at ‘looking pleasant.’
“Lillian, we are serious. Everyone new to our staff undergoes a background check and gets patted down for weapons and god knows what else” —she gazed up at Mister Security again— “the first time they arrive for work, and then randomly afterward.”
Jesus. What had I wandered into? I knew from Beebie, who’d decorated their apartment, that Amalia’s husband, the esteemed Eckhart von Malsen, was some kind of important United Nations diplomat. But was patting down the cleaning lady really necessary?
I decided not to make a joke leaving my own gun at home.
But Mister Security was freaking hot, and I hadn’t been touched by a man in a while. 
I smiled to show what a pleasant person I was. “Okay. Um, do we go into another room or something?” I asked, looking between the two of them.
Would he ask me to take my clothes off? That might not be so bad…
Amalia looked at me with scorn. “No, dear. Just put your hands up on the wall right there, and let Cal do his job. And mind the wallpaper.”
Holy crap. Just like in the movies.
“I’m not not sure I’m comfortable with this, Mrs. von Malsen—”
“No,” she cried, “please call me Amalia.”
Not the point, but okay.
“Amalia—”
She pressed her lips together and sniffed, clearly not used to being questioned. “Lillian, please let Cal do his job so we can all go on about our day.”
I looked at Security, hoping for some solidarity. We were both staff bitches. But the expression on his face didn’t indicate he felt the same way. There was a hierarchy here, and we were clearly at opposite ends of it.
He gestured toward the wall with his chin, his lips pressed together sternly.
What an ass.
So I turned around and slapped my hands on Amalia’s wallpaper, stepping my feet apart like they did on the real crime shows. As he moved closer, I bent and pushed my ass out, hoping to ‘innocently’ graze him.
He was too fast for me. 
He smoothed his hands over my hair, then my shoulders and down my back. He ran his hands over each of my arms and then my legs, squeezing lightly, then around my abdomen and just up to my underwire bra.
Guess they don’t feel the boobs.
His hands skimmed my butt cheeks, and then he stopped.
“Is that it?” I asked, trying to see him over my shoulder.
“Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”
Well. That was kind of lame, as pat-downs go.
Regaining my dignity, I whipped around, I guess a little too fast for Security, because I found my nose inches from his chest. 
“Oh. Excuse me,” I said, stepping to the side.
Security nodded at Amalia, then click-clicked down the hall to wherever he’d come from.
“Thanks, Cal,” Amalia called after him in a dreamy voice.
He turned and nodded. “You’re welcome, ma’am.”
Suck up.
The smile on her face faded as she turned to me. “Let’s go to the kitchen.”
Welcome to the von Malsens’.
We passed through a sprawling living room with multiple seating areas reminiscent of a hotel lobby and lots of cool, oversized paintings on the walls.
Damn. Beebie had done an amazing job putting this place together. Guess that’s why she was one of New York’s top decorators. 
“Your home is lovely, Amalia.”
She stopped so abruptly I almost plowed into her. “It’s the view that sold us,” she announced, gesturing toward French doors that opened onto a terrace, and city skyline beyond.
I could see why. 
New York was a crazy place to be with its endless noise, smells, and throngs of different sorts of humanity. But a sanctuary like this would make for a whole different experience, especially compared to what I was used to. My apartment building had a permanent slight garbage-y smell, which no amount of Lysol could cover up. The hallways were strewn like a minefield with bicycles and baby carriages people couldn't fit into their tiny apartments. And our views looked straight into the apartments across the alley, including that of one chubby guy who liked to clean naked. 
Coming home to this sort of Upper East Side hermetically-sealed perfection, where the only smell was of the roses on the dining table and the only sounds were of classical music playing in a distant room, would wash away any discomforts the Big Apple might throw one’s way. 
I could live in one of these vertical mansions, no problem.
That’s what Beebie called them, vertical mansions.
“Have a seat,” Amalia said, gesturing to a stool at the counter.
The kitchen was no less impressive than anything else I’d seen so far, naturally, with its all white tile and stainless appliances. “Beebie did a really good job here, too.”
She’d told me the white and stainless look was an awful trend that would be tired in five years. 
Joke’s on you, lady.
Amalia returned from the fridge with two Diet Cokes.
I hated Diet Coke.
“She did. Beebie’s so very talented,” Amalia said, nodding proudly, like she’d discovered her. “How do you know her?”
“We met in yoga. She’s my best friend.”
Amalia looked like she’d sucked a lemon. “Oh. I thought you did cleaning for her.”
Crap. Was that the story Beebie had told her?
Guess Amalia didn’t like that her prestigious and very high-end interior designer had a friend who cleaned houses.
But the truth was, I didn’t really clean houses. I was just pretending to clean houses. Temporarily, god willing. I’d just been let go from my crappy job at a daycare center, where they’d somehow intuited I couldn't stand kids.
I had to work on that being too transparent thing.
The day care center hadn’t been much of a job, but I’d made enough to cover my cheap rent-controlled dump of an apartment, and it left me plenty of time to take classes and write. When I’d griped to Beebie that the job had come to an unceremonious end, she told me one of her clients was just lamenting that her housekeeper had bailed on her, and why didn’t I try to fill my job gap with something in a fancy Upper East Side home?
I wasn’t sure why she thought cleaning the dirt of a wealthy family was somehow preferable to doing the same for a less well-off family, but I was in no position to be picky. Rent was due in one week, and I’d just spent the small cash cushion I’d saved on an expensive dress for events where I planned to network and meet people.
“I used to clean for Beebie,” I corrected myself. “I just don’t, um, clean for her now.”
Amalia nodded, taking a long draw on her soda. “She also told me you’re working on a book or something?”
Beebie had also told me this woman might have industry connections—the most valuable currency in town. Everybody in New York wanted connections. They wanted to connect, and be connected to. It was how things worked here, and as soon as I’d caught on to the way the game was played, I began filling my own dance card with all the people I could meet. 
It would someday pay off, everybody told me.
And in order to collect these relationships, you had to act the part. Thus, the expensive dress.
My shoes were second-hand, though.
I studied Amalia, wondering how much I could share with her. She’d been snotty as hell in the foyer, but I guess now that she was confident I was not a weapon-carrying domestic terrorist, she’d relaxed.
“I’m a writer,” I said proudly.
No one would ever know how long I had to practice that in front of the mirror before I could say that with determination.
To be honest, I still wilted a little on the inside when I spoke the words. But I’d like to think I hid it well.
“I have one romance novel under my belt, and another in the works,” I added.
Amalia waved her hand, I figured ready to add something like ‘stick with it,’ or ‘what a great calling.’ 
Instead she followed up with a healthy scoff. “A writer? Just like everyone else in New York.”
Oh no she didn’t.
I felt heat creeping from my neck, where it tiptoed up and onto my face. In moments, there was moisture on my temples, and my mouth was dry as a desert.
I sipped the Diet Coke before I choked. Or choked the woman in front of me.
God, did people love to dump on writers.
Writers don’t make any money.
Writers are alcoholics.
Writers are lonely. 
The list of what I’d heard over the years could probably fill its own book. The comments came from nearly everyone—my mother, people I barely knew like Amalia, and even fellow students in my writing classes. Seriously, as if being a writer wasn’t hard enough, people are gunning for you to fall on your ass from the get-go. 
Fuck that.
Fuck the naysayers.
And fuck Amalia.
Instead of letting her know she’d riled me, I put my hands up like right? 
“I love how there are so many writers here in New York. It’s so great for learning and networking, and there are so many opportunities to do interesting work.”
Okay, that was kind of bullshitty.
Amalia, unconvinced, set her soda down and stood. “Ready to get going?”
* * *