Capturing Clara: Protect and Pleasure, #3

By Felicity Raine

I hate Jack Spear with the passion of a thousand white hot suns. I have never been more embarrassed than the day my former bodyguard rejected me four years ago. 

 

I was so certain that he felt the same things for me that I felt for him. I'd wanted him to be my first, my only, my…everything. Instead, he pushed me away and left our ranch, never to be seen or heard from again.

 

Now, he's back, to protect me one last time as a favor to my father.

 

But I'm not the same shy young girl I used to be, and I can absolutely take of myself. I'm prepared to tell Jack that I don't need a bodyguard and send him on his way. I'm not prepared for him to surprise me at my door with a kiss hot enough to melt all my hurt and anger.

 

It seems like my romantic dreams are finally coming true, until the man whose obsession with my family has haunted my entire life turns up in my backyard, transforming our dream into a nightmare.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Felicity Press
• Release date: Dec 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215172322

Book preview

1

Clara

Iclutch my cell tighter and will myself not to lose my cool.

Dad’s only trying to protect me and keep me safe, the way he always has. And he’s right—if my mother’s stalker really is on the warpath again, we should all be careful.

Especially Mom, myself, and my little sister, Sarah.

Glen Potts, the man who’s been obsessed with my mom for decades, tried to steal me from the hospital when I was a newborn. In the twenty-one years since, he’s written Mom tons of creepy letters, insisting the four of us will be a real family someday.

The man is full-blown crazy, and you can’t reason with crazy. The best you can do is to stay alert and vigilant, hire bodyguards if you can afford them, and hope the whack job gets caught by the police before he can do too much damage.

Silently vowing that when I’m a lawyer, I’ll give such dazzling closing arguments that juries will jump at the chance to put stalkers away for life, I sigh and unclench my jaw.

All right, I tell Dad. I’ll keep an eye out and be sure to let Jack in when he arrives. I’ll get the guest room ready for him now.

Good, Dad says, relief clear in his voice. And say hi to him for me. Tell him we’ve missed him at the ranch.

Will do, love you, I force out, ending the call before I say something I’ll regret.

Dad has no idea that I hate Jack Spear with the passion of a thousand white hot suns or that I have very good reasons never to want to see his stupid, handsome face again.

Against my wishes, my thoughts zip back to that hot summer day years ago…

I was seventeen. Jack was twenty-seven, and I was so in love with him I couldn’t hold back my feelings any longer.

I surprised him at our secret pond deep in the woods, the one only the two of us knew about. Me, because I was a wild kid who loved roaming the forests and discovering their secrets. Jack, because he was my bodyguard and followed me everywhere.

But that day, I followed him. It was his afternoon off, and I was supposed to be hanging out with Sarah and her bodyguard, Cade. Instead, I faked a headache and retreated to my room only to sneak out the window and run down the trail into the woods.

I found Jack at the pond not long after, floating in the middle of the calm blue water, staring up at the cloudless sky. I expected him to be there—it was one of our favorite spots, after all. I didn’t, however, expect him to be skinny dipping.

Seeing him naked and gorgeous under the big Wyoming sky felt like a sign. A sign that what I wanted with Jack was what the universe wanted for us, too. A sign that loving and lusting after the man who had protected me since I was a kid was not only okay, but…perfect.

It was perfect that I would find him out here like this.

Perfect that I strip down and join him in the water.

Perfect that our first time together—my first time ever—would be on the sandy bank of our secret pond, the two of us tangled up together under the trees like the first man and woman put on earth.

I was so positive that this was where I was supposed to be, and that Jack was the man I was supposed to be with, that I didn’t hesitate to shed my clothes and dive into the cool mountain pool. I swam hard beneath the still water to emerge just a few feet from Jack, smiling like an idiot.

No, like something worse than an idiot.

A fool, maybe.

Or an insane person, just like Mom’s stalker.

That’s how usually good-tempered and easy-going Jack treated me once he realized I was naked and why.

First, he yelled at me, then he swam away as fast as he could.

For the first time in my experience with my devoted bodyguard, he left me alone in the woods. He threw on his clothes and jogged down the path without a glance over his shoulder.

By the time I’d stopped crying, pulled myself together, struggled into my clothes, and made my way back to the ranch, he was gone. He’d quit on the spot, without notice, spinning some bullshit story to Dad about a sick grandma in California that he had to take care of.

But there was no sick grandma.

There was only a sick Jack, a man so disgusted by my naked body he had to quit a job he loved and flee the state at that very moment.

It took ages for me to be able to think of that day without shame eating me alive. Even now, almost four years later, the memory makes my stomach cramp and a part of me wants to sink through my bungalow’s floor and disappear.

But I can’t.

Jack is going to be here any minute, back to guard me like the old days as a favor to my family. He’s taking a break from running his own very successful private security business to watch over his old charge, even though he probably couldn’t care less if I live or die.

If he cared, if all those years of closeness and friendship and laughter had meant anything, he wouldn’t have

Reviews for Capturing Clara

[Amber Wiggins · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An amazing quick read I would definitely recommend you read all of her books!