In any case, he was sure that going in the kitchen was going to end up in disaster because he might have fallen asleep over the stove. He had never been quite as tired as he had those last few days, even when he had stayed up in Ibiza for days at a time.

  He was dying for a smoke and maybe a little alone time, but every morning, it felt like his sister would waltz into his bedroom and jump on his chest until she had squeezed all the air out of his body and he was breathless and completely awake.

  It was eight in the morning—far too early for anyone sensible—and Ellie was having breakfast on the kitchen counter, staring at him with her wide green eyes and saying nothing.

  He sat down next to her and started working on his third cup of coffee of the day.

  “Good morning,” Knight said as he walked through the kitchen door, looking like he had recently showered, moisturized and gotten back from a three-day spa. How he managed to look so rested was a true mystery to Sean and it pissed him off to his very core.

  Sean was a mess and Rocky Knight just kept getting hotter.

  It was annoying. He was supposed to be showing his father how responsible he was, but he found that, despite himself, he often tried to impress Rocky.

  Not that he would have known it if he had managed to impress Agent Knight. Sean might have known his mannerisms well, but he could hardly tell how Knight felt about him. He could tell how he felt about other things because the man never tried to hide it.

  But when their eyes met, whenever Sean searched for something else there with his gaze, Agent Knight’s expression was always the same, almost like the clothing he wore—crisp, impenetrable. He could have just as well been thinking about the stock market every time he looked right at Sean’s face.

  “Good morning,” Sean replied, barely looking up from his cup of coffee. “There’s coffee on the pot.”

  “Good,” Knight replied. “I’m dying for a cup of coffee.”

  Sean raised his eyebrows. It didn’t look like he was. He poured himself a cup and leaned against the wall, every movement looking practiced. He began on his drink and glanced at Sean, not saying or doing anything.

  There was something mocking about the way he was looking at Sean, but Sean didn’t have the energy to take him to task about it. Even if he had, he knew that Agent Knight was an expert at getting out of answering questions.

  “So what are your plans for today?” Knight asked, glowering at Sean.

  Sean looked at Ellie and ruffled her hair. “We’re going to the zoo,” he said to his sister. “Aren’t we?”

  “Yes!” she said. “We’re going to see the lions.”

  “What else?” Sean said with a smile.

  “Elephants,” his little sister said. “Snakes.”

  “Snakes?” Sean replied, giggling. “I don’t think there’s a snake cage.”

  “I like snakes,” Ellie replied, twisting her face. “I want there to be a snake cage.”

  Sean was giggling when he heard Knight take a step closer toward them. “I’m sure you’ll see plenty of slithering, kid,” he said. Ellie looked up at him and her eyes glimmered.

  “Do you promise?” she asked, her voice a whisper. She was so serious, it was making Sean crack up even more. He didn’t want to make her feel bad, so he made sure to twist his body away from her as he laughed.

  “Yes,” Agent Knight said. “I promise.”

  Sean cleared his throat once he was done laughing. “Go get ready,” he said. “There are clothes on your bed.”

  She pouted.

  “If you want to get to the zoo soon, you have to go and get ready,” Sean reiterated.

  She got off the stool with a jump, her little feet making a thud noise as she landed. She looked over her shoulder and stuck her tongue out at him. Sean stuck his tongue back out at her, then went back to working on his cup of coffee.

  “Are you not looking forward to the zoo as much, Mr. Connor?”

  Sean rolled his eyes. “You know that you can call me Sean, right?”

  “You still call me Agent Knight,” the man said.

  Sean grimaced. “I mean, your name is Rocky Knight,” Sean said. “The idea of calling you by your name is preposterous.”

  “Fair enough,” Agent Knight replied. He set the empty cup of coffee in front of Sean’s own. “So the zoo? Why didn’t you tell me about that?”

  Sean groaned, creaking his neck. Knight didn’t ask questions like this one to his father. He didn’t know why the way Agent Knight treated him should be any different. Then again, he supposed that he wasn’t the president, so he didn’t deserve the same amount of respect that his father did.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “It was sort of spontaneous. Plus I didn’t want you to plan a whole thing where you recruited half the secret service.”

  Agent Knight raised his eyebrows. “You’re the president’s children,” he said. “You should understand the realities of your situation.”

  Sean rolled his eyes. “I do understand,” he said. “You have to forgive me for trying to make my small sister’s life a little better.”

  Knight sighed. He walked over to where Sean was and sat down on the stool next to him. “You have to be careful,” he said quietly.

  “I know,” Sean replied. “Trust me, I know. You drilled it into my head.”

  “Clearly not enough,” Agent Knight said. He had turned to look at Sean and his knees were only inches away from Sean’s legs. Sean knew he shouldn’t have thought about it, but he couldn’t help himself.

  The man was strong, lean, beautiful.

  If only he hadn’t been Agent Knight. If only he had been anyone else, at all, then maybe Sean would have considered swiveling around on the stool and interlocking his knees with this person.

  But he knew that the moment he did that, Agent Knight would stand up and walk away. He would ask him what he was doing.

  He might even treat it as some sort of childish indiscretion, which Sean didn’t even want to picture. He bit the inside of his cheek hard. No, he couldn’t get carried away with how good-looking Agent Knight was.

  He was there for one thing and one thing only, looking after his sister. That was exactly what he intended to do. He grabbed his cup of coffee, which had already been emptied, and put it to his lips. There was nothing left and he knew that well, but he still held it up to his face and pretended to finish it.

  He could feel Agent Knight’s gaze on him and he was pretty sure that Knight could tell exactly what he was doing. Sean cleared his throat as he moved his cup away from his face. “I’m going to go get my sister,” he said. “And we’re going to the zoo. Whether you like it or not.”

  Knight watched him, saying nothing. A hand on his knee, his body tilted slightly forward, Sean could tell that Knight was paying close attention to him.

  He walked away from the kitchen, still able to feel Knight’s gaze on him, and it wasn’t until he had turned a corner and was about to take on the stairs that he practically broke out into a sprint.

  ***

  “Her socks don’t match,” Agent Knight helpfully pointed out when they were getting off the Escalade. Ellie had already walked a few steps ahead.

  “Should we take her home to change her socks, Agent Knight?” Sean heard himself say. He bit his tongue almost instantly. Sure, Agent Knight was being a pain in the ass, but he was also helping Sean.

  There was no need for Sean to be rude. He was completely certain Agent Knight was going to report everything to his father, anyway, so it wasn’t as if he could get away and have any fun, even when Ellie had been tired out.

  He hadn’t managed to dissuade Knight from bringing along a bunch of other secret service agents with them, but at least they were all in plain clothes and had arrived in different vehicles. Regardless of how he felt about Agent Knight, he did appreciate it when he at least tried to pretend that things were normal for them.

  Especially when it came to Ellie.

  Because Ellie did deserve to have the normal life that had been taken away from Sean, he thought as he watched her skip in front of him. He had worked hard to give her a ponytail, but her hair wasn’t very long so it looked a little silly sitting on top of her head. When he had asked her if she wanted someone from the staff to help her, she had shaken her head vigorously.

  He didn’t know at what age children were supposed to begin learning agency, but he wanted his little sister to learn as soon as possible. She was going to go through life being confronted by a crushingly limited amount of freedom and the more freedom of choice she had, the better it would be for her.

  Sean watched her practically begin to run as someone let her through the gate. It was another secret service agent—Sean knew that. They would never take their eyes off her.

  He lagged behind. The zoo had never quite been his scene. He didn’t like seeing all the animals being caged or even roaming among the big pastures. It felt too much like a metaphor for his life. He had never told anyone that, of course, Sean knew to keep his dramatic side to himself.

  He had only agreed to go because Ellie had begged for so long and he had felt too bad saying no. He was positively sure his father didn’t take her many places, mostly because he couldn’t.

  He was never not going to be the president of the United States. Paparazzi were prone to mobbing him on the street and then posting pictures of his children on the front page of every tabloid.

  He remembered when his friend had posted a picture where he had been in the background, taking a hit off a bong someone had handed him. That had been national news for weeks.

  He shuddered a little, despite the fact that it was a nice, sunny day. He was hoping for some time alone, but it was clear that Agent Knight was going to hang back and stay with him.

  Their gazes met and Sean rolled his eyes.

  “You still won’t let me have time to myself?”

  Knight shrugged. “I’m here to help you,” he said. “The kid is being looked after and you, well, you look like you might faint at any minute.”

  Sean pinched the bridge of his nose, leaning against the SUV. “That’s rude,” he said quietly. He didn’t want to acknowledge that Agent Knight commenting on his appearance negatively had hurt his feelings, but it had.

  “Hey,” Knight said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay. You haven’t slept. Kids are hard.”

  Sean looked at the hand on his shoulder. It felt warm and heavy on him and Sean thought, for a second, that he should have shrugged it off. He looked up at Knight’s face, ready to tell him to back away, but there was nothing condescending about the way he was looking at Sean.

  And Sean knew condescending.

  He had seen it on Agent Knight’s face more times than he could count.

  He sighed and leaned back. Knight seemed to come to his senses and immediately dropped his hand to his side.

  “What would you know?” Sean said, trying to keep his tone measured regardless of how much he wanted to snap. “I mean, you don’t have kids.”

  “I don’t have any children of my own,” he said. “But do you think raising Don was easy?”

  Sean took a deep breath as he bit down on his lower lip. He knew a little bit about the relationship between his best friend and his father’s glorified bodyguard. His dislike for Agent Knight could have had something to do with what Don Knight had told him about his older brother, or at least it might have when they were kids, but as Don got older and slowly worked over the resentment he felt regarding his family situation, Sean only felt like his grew more and more.

  And his dislike for Agent Knight felt like it was at an all-time peak, even though Knight was doing nothing. He was just talking to him, being… nice.

  It was so strange, Sean practically couldn’t understand it. He was so used to Knight being rude and dismissive toward him that this whole earnest and kind approach felt calculated.

  “He was a teenager,” Sean said after a very long time. “I assume you got more sleep.”

  Knight laughed then, throwing his head back. His laughter was deep and sweet, more sincere than Sean had ever heard it, and it made him weak at the knees.

  He didn’t want to feel like that about Agent Knight.

  He didn’t want to feel like that about anyone, but he definitely, especially didn’t want to have to deal with feeling like that about Agent Knight.

  He could remember every humiliation, every time that Knight had grabbed him by the hand and pulled him away from a prospect at a night club. He could remember Knight standing in front of him, his arms crossed over his chest, as Sean emptied the contents of his stomach in the lake behind the pool house where he was staying with the Belgian ambassador’s son.

  Agent Knight had seen Sean naked far too many times and not a single one of them had been flattering. There had been the time when he’d been in the bathroom of Cowboys, getting blown by the boy with glitter in his hair. Then there had been the last time, when Agent Knight had decided to knock on his door early in the morning and Sean had decided to get up and confront him wearing absolutely nothing but a blanket draped around his waist.

  If Agent Knight wanted a show, then Sean was going to give him a show.

  It had seemed like a good idea at the time. It didn’t anymore.

  “I didn’t get any sleep,” Knight said.

  Sean smiled at him. “Guess I didn’t help, huh?”

  “No,” Knight replied. “You were never particularly helpful.”

  “Sorry,” Sean said quietly.

  Knight shrugged. “It is what it is,” he said. “Listen…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why don’t you take a nap?”

  Sean blinked. “Pardon me?”

  “In the escalade,” Knight replied. “Sure, it won’t be a particularly restful nap, but it might help you.”

  “Help me with what?” Sean said, his eyes narrowing.

  Knight smirked at him. “Your mental acuity, for starters,” he said.

  If he’d had any energy left in him, he might have swung for him. But he felt nothing except an elevated level of irritation, and maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t such a bad idea just because it was coming from Agent Knight.

  “Fuck you,” he said, but he opened the door to the SUV when Agent Knight clicked on the key fob all the same.

  It was, of course, crushingly warm in the backseat. Sean should have anticipated it, but he hadn’t. He hadn’t thought about anything other than getting away from Agent Knight.

  As if he had been able to hear his thoughts, Knight opened the driver door and slid into the driver seat. He turned the key in the ignition, which got the air conditioning blasting in the backseat, and Sean sighed.

  “Thanks, Agent Knight,” he said quietly.

  “You’re welcome, Mr. Connor,” Agent Knight said gently. At least Sean thought it was gently, and that was good enough for him. He closed his eyes as he felt the cool leather on his cheek.

  He could hear Agent Knight tapping away on his phone, but little else, and before he knew it, he was falling asleep in the back of the escalade.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Knight was wondering what had gotten into him as he looked at the lump in the rearview mirror.

  Sean looked younger when he was asleep, his knees almost at his chest, his arms wrapped around his legs. His mouth was half-open and he was drooling all over himself.

  It reminded Knight of driving him around when he was still a young kid, on the cusp of puberty, when he would fall asleep and his head would loll and move every time they went over a speed bump, drool dripping down his chin.

  That had been such a long time ago, it was hard to believe that the boy in the fetal position was the same person.

  Man, he told himself quietly. He had grown into a man, a beautiful one, but of course that didn’t mean anything, because he was the president’s son, and even if he hadn’t been, he was his brother’s best friend.

  He had practically seen him grow up along with his brother. If he hadn’t been the president’s son, he might as well have been his brother.

  Knight sighed and sank into his seat. He shouldn’t have cared so much about Sean Connor.

  He closed his eyes and leaned his head back so it hit the headrest. He stared at the ceiling of the fully armored escalade, wondering, exactly, how much time of his life he had spent in SUVs.

  It was rarely his job to drive them anymore.

  He put his hands on the wheel and felt the leather under his fingers. There was something grounding about it. For a second, everything was alright, and he wasn’t thinking about the boy—the man—in the backseat.

  Then his earpiece started buzzing.

  “Knight,” he said.

  “Code blue,” a female voice said back.

  There was a moment when he had to rack his brain about the codes. When it came to the children, there were different codes which he himself had come up with.

  He just hadn’t heard any of them for the longest time.

  “10-4, Cooper,” he replied.

  “Should I evacuate?” the agent asked. She sounded scared, which was never a good sign.

  “Not yet,” he replied. “Look for her. I’ll join you in a minute.”

  “Knight—”

  “Out,” he said into his earpiece. Technically, the staff were all working for him, and if they had managed to lose the child, it would be his ass on the line. But he didn’t care about that.

  He could get fired as long as Ellie was okay.

  He turned around. “Sean,” he said. “Wake up.”

  Sean’s eyes fluttered open slowly before he groaned. Knight grimaced and reached out to shake him awake. “Wake up,” he said again. “Ellie is gone.”

  That made Sean practically sit up straight. It was a good thing the SUV was so big because in a sedan, he would have hit his head against the ceiling. “She’s what?” he asked.

  His voice was croaky with sleep but the sense of urgency in his voice was immediate.

  “My agents are looking for her now,” he said quietly. “But I thought you’d want to go look for with me.”

  “Yes,” Sean replied. “Yes, definitely.”

  He got out of the car in record time. Knight found himself struggling to keep up with Sean, despite being in peak physical condition and taking longer strides from being taller.

 

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