CHAPTER 3: JASON.

The new bodyguard was a woman.

Jason didn't know whether to be insulted or amused.

"You've got to be kidding me." He looked from his grandmother's smiley face to the tomboy standing at attention like a soldier reporting for duty. 

"Her?"

"Her name is Jenna Smith," Helena said. "And she comes highly recommended."

"She could as well be one of my fitness coaches."

"Fitness coaches don't have her training."

Jason moved in a circle around Jenna slowly. She didn't flinch or move, she just stood still.

 Her eyes followed him like a hunter watching a prey, but her body remained unshaken.

Impressive, he admitted silently as regarding her physique.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-seven."

" I see you love your tattoos, how many are there?"

"Twelve."

"Piercings?"

"Four."

"Ever killed a man?"

Silence.

Then with a brief smirk, she admits: "Not yet."

Jason laughed. He couldn't help it, she had guts, he'd give her that. And there was something in her eyes which was sharp and dangerous that intrigued him.

"Jason," Helena said sharply, "Ms. Smith is here to protect you. The least you can do is…"

"Protect me from what? My choice in women?" He grinned. "This is simply overboard Abuela, totally unnecessary, but I’m happy with your love for charity."

Jenna didn't react. She would never give him that much satisfaction that his words had just hit her right in the pit of her stomach.

And her indifference bothered him more than it should have.

"Fine," Jason said. " She stays. But I'm not making any promises of being accountable…especially not to her.  Now if you would excuse me, Abuela, I’ve got to take my leave, the meeting with the stakeholders begins at thirty." He kissed her cheek, and walked out of the room clearly done with his grandmother’s plan. 

He didn't see the way Jenna's fist was clenched secretly in total hunger and annoyance to come right at him from the back, or the way Helena's eyes followed him as he walked out, her stare like a concerned mother.

---

The first week was a war.

Jason tested Jenna every chance he got. He tried to sneak out of the mansion at midnight. She was waiting by his car in the garage. He tried to slip away during a business dinner. She appeared beside him like a ghost.

 He even tried to lose her in his VIP suite at his favourite club knowing she couldn’t get in without his approval.

She did. She flashed the Creed security badge at the door that Helena gave her, and simply stated it was a family emergency.

"Jane," he said on the sixth night, "...you're starting to annoy me."

"That's my job, Mr. Creed. And the name is Jenna."

"Whatever it is, Jane. Your job is to keep unwanted female company away from me. Not to follow me to the fucking bathroom!"

She didn't smile, and didn't even blink for a second.  “Just obeying orders...I've been instructed to be with close to you at all times."

Jason leaned closer to her. Close enough to see the brown of her eyes and close enough to smell something sweetly floral beneath her leather outfit.

His eyes, lingering on hers too long. "Is that a promise?" He teased.

For just a second, he saw her face flush, but then it was gone.

"It's my JOB to do so."

She stepped back, and he caught himself watching her hands when she adjusted her jacket. They were steady and not shaky like the other women who fidgeted when they stood at a close distance.

Jason felt something he hadn't felt in years.

Interest.

It wasn't the bored way he felt for the women on his grandmother's list, or the temporal rush of attraction he felt for the club girls who threw themselves at him.

 It was something deeper, something that made him want to know her.

But he pushed it down. She was the baroness staff, a stuck-up lady, he reminded himself... And she's built like a refrigerator.

But that night, while lying alone in his bed for the first time in months, thanks to Jenna, he couldn't stop thinking about her eyes.

---

The next week was worse.

Jason was restless. The approved list of women bored him,  and Jenna… Jenna was everywhere, watching him with those brown hawk eyes, and judging him without saying a word.

"She's good," his second best official guard, Marco, admitted. "The best I've seen."

"She's a pain in my ass."

"Are you aware she knocked out Diego in thirty seconds?"

Jason paused. "What?"

Diego and Marco were brothers to Jason at this point. Guards with a lot more access to him.

"Yeah Diego,  who's been in the hospital for some days now." Marco's expression was slightly amused. "She's the one who put him there."

Jason's mind went back to the boxing match Diego had hinted he would be gracing, and the frantic report he’d gotten afterwards.

Just to find out, the woman who'd destroyed his best guard, one Sunday, two weeks prior; the woman he'd been dismissing as just a tomboy with a well-used gym membership.

That woman was Jenna.

"You're telling me," Jason said slowly, "that my new guard… the one who my grandmother recently hired to watch my every damn move, is the same woman who sent Diego to the ER?"

"Yes, sir."

Jason started laughing, because of course his grandmother would hire the one woman in the world who could physically destroy him if he went to the extreme.  The universe surely did have a sick sense of humor.

Jenna Smith, he thought. You surely are a bag full of surprises.

—

Jason needed a distraction from the latest drama in his life, one of which was majorly – Jenna. So he went to a bar.

Not the VIP lounges he usually frequented, knowing damn well now that she would find him there. 

He settled for the kind of place she wouldn’t suspect he would go for, a very random and cheap bar where nobody asked questions and no one cared enough to remember the face of a business elite.

The girl he first encountered was pretty, petite, and blonde. Just how he liked his women. 

"Buy me a drink?" she flirted with her eyes, the moment she noticed the Richard Millie on his wrist .

Jason smiled. "I'll buy you the whole bar if you can handle it."

He cared less to know her name. He didn't ask because he simply didn't care. 

She was fun enough to make his night perfect.

They ended up in his car, then a hotel. He eyed Marco, as they got down; a signal to be on the look out for his employed stalker.

Then…moments later, his phone rang as he watched her strip.

He ignored it.

It rang again a few minutes later, and several more times, ruining the mood in the room.

Finally, he looked.

"Get out. NOW. – Jenna. S"

Jason frowned. How did she know where he was? How did she get past…

The hotel room door right then, burst open.

Jenna stood in the doorway, breathing hard, her eyes filled with anger. 

"What the…"

Jenna moved faster than the speed of light. One second she was at the door, the next, she seized the girl's phone, at a corner she’d hidden it to record, and crushed it under her boot, immediately ordering her out of the room.

"Wait a minute…" Everything was happening too fast for Jason to comprehend what he’d just seen. She had been recording all along, even though he’d asked Marco to take hold of her devices, and physically seen him take them all. 

He would later find out she’d hidden another phone in her bra, and was quick to set it up somewhere hidden during a short business call in the balcony.

Jason sighed.

He didn't know yet that the girl's father was a trashy blogger, didn't know that the blackmail was already in motion as it was a live video chat to her father, who had gotten himself just enough to strike.