The Assassin’s Billionaire Bodyguard
Chapter 31

Isabella entered the dining room surprised to replace not just Cam, Portia, and Gideon but also five other men and one woman.

"Isabella," Cam stood up from his seat and motioned for her to sit between him and Gideon. He was wearing a pair of perfectly fitted and faded jeans she knew he'd probably worn a hundred times by the way they molded to his frame and a black t-shirt. He motioned to the only woman at the table. "This is Myriam. She's the best damn housekeeper on the planet and she keeps this rowdy group of animals in line."

She nodded, "it's nice to meet you, Myriam."

He waited until she sat and then went around the table. "You know Gideon and Portia and I believe you met Mickey earlier when you first arrived." He introduced the other four men.

"We weren't formally introduced but hey," she waved to the guard who had shown her the way to Cam's bedroom. She heard a sound under the table and turned her head to look on Gideon's lap. "I was wondering where he had disappeared to. He was there while I was showering and then he disappeared. You can't keep him on your lap while you eat. You'll spoil him."

"Says the woman who imports his treats from Spain," Cam threw at her. He pointed down the table and introduced the rest of the men at the table.

"You import your dog's treats from Spain?" Portia returned to Cam's comment.

"Yes. They aren't even dog treats." She laughed as she reached over and stroked Casper's ears. "They're anchovies I brought back as a joke for my brothers pizza shop and discovered he really loves them. He gives me such peace the least I can do is give him what he loves." "How old is he?" Gideon asked as he passed a plate of potatoes to her.

"I've had him five years and I got him when he was six months old. It took me a year from the time I started looking for a dog to replace him. Clara was helping me replace him and she kept bringing me to breeders of huge dogs like labs and retrievers. She has two Great Danes and I love them. I realized though how much work they are when I babysat them one weekend when she and Elian were dating. I knew then I wanted a small dog but replaceing a breeder of small emotional support dogs is hard to replace and when I did replace one, the wait list is crazy long. Then you have to wait for them to go through training to see if they're actually able to be declared an emotional support dog."

"Why do you need a support dog?" Portia asked rudely.

"Because when I younger, bad s**t happened to me. I was lucky but sometimes I don't like to be alone. Clara suggested a dog is a good way to make someone feel safe. She was thinking a German Shephard. She was so disappointed." "But how exactly does he help?"

Isabella added the vegetables Gideon had just passed her to her plate and then passed it over to Cam before answering, noting Cam's flared nostrils at his daughter. If she told the girl to piss off, she knew he would support her. She answered instead, "Casper is trained to detect my heart rate when it's increased, to note a change in my breaths and to simply provide bodily contact when I'm stressed. He also wakes me if I'm dreaming and alerts me to other physiological changes I'm not detecting."

"Like if you had a panic attack?" Mickey asked from down the table.

"Exactly though I haven't had a panic attack in years. He made them go away within three months of having him."

"When he made circles on the sofa earlier?" Portia asked quietly.

"You were stressed, and he sensed it. His sign, like doggy sign-language, was the sign to breathe. Consider the cycle of breathing as a circle. You inhale," she rolled her hand forward and completed a circular motion, "and then you exhale it completes a cycle which is never ending. His breeder likes this sign as a reminder to breathe. It's what he learned as a puppy. He does have other signs but a lot of them he doesn't use at all. The truth is, just having him near me is enough." She watched as Gideon slipped him a piece of chicken off his plate. "Also, he has a special diet, so he doesn't become obese. It's a genetic predisposition to many small breeds."

"Did Evgeni like him?"

"Portia!" Cam finally interrupted her.

"No, he didn't," Isabella ignored Cam's annoyed curse at his daughter. "He hated him, and the feeling was mutual. I rarely stayed with Evgeni at his place because of it."

"But if Casper's job is to help you, why would Evgeni hate him?"

"Because Portia, Casper stole his spotlight. Casper could do for me the one thing Evgeni never could and it is to give me peace." She sighed, "you know what he's like. He likes to be the centre of attention. If people come into a room and see a small dog, they rush to the small dog and pat him and coo over him. It took the attention away from him."

She nodded quietly, "he once told me he'd never let me get a dog if we ever lived together."

"You discussed living together?" Cam's voice raised considerably, and Isabella kicked him under the table. He glared at her and pressed his lips together angrily.

"Not really, it was a hypothetical conversation. A girl we had met had a dog in a purse and I said it was cute and he got all cranky about it."

Isabella wasn't surprised as she lifted a spear of broccoli to her lips and ate it. She looked to Myriam, "dinner is really good. Thank you so much. This must have taken you all day."

"The key is to be organized. It surely doesn't compare though to the things your brothers make."

She laughed, "Myriam, I am thrilled to eat roast chicken, potatoes and vegetables over some of their concoctions. I stopped by to see them on Saturday before I went out of town for the weekend and my brother was trying a new recipe. It was a burger stuffed with truffles and blue cheese. Who does this to a burger? He put a kind of foam on a taco a while back and his new pizza place puts kale on their pies." She lifted a roast potato and eyed it lovingly, "this is a delicacy."

"You went away for the weekend?" Portia interrupted again.

Isabella looked to her again and saw the clenching of Cam's jaw. She was dancing all over his last nerve with her nosy questions. "Yup. Clara has a friend who owns a resort in Rio de Janeiro. Occasionally, if the attendance is low at the resort, we go down and make up numbers. It's off-season right now. I told her Saturday how much I just wanted a weekend away from the drama and she set it up. It pays to have important family sometimes."

"You were in Rio?" "Yes."

"Evgeni told me he was spending the weekend with you, and it was why I couldn't reach him."

"Has it not dawned on you, he tells you these things, so you continue to make him the center of your world, chase him and make him feel important? He wants you to be jealous and chasing him because it feeds his ego." She pulled her phone out of her purse, "this is me Sunday night in Rio doing shots with the girls." She looked to Cam, "pretty sure there is video of me with the bartender you don't want to see."

"He saw them," Gideon said not looking up from the dog he was sneaking bits of chicken to.

Isabella looked at Cam with an irritated inquisitive stare.

"I wanted to know you were safe." He shoveled a mouthful of vegetables avoiding her gaze.

She looked at Portia as she passed her the phone with the video playing, "well, since your dad already saw it, I guess he won't care then."

Portia giggled and put her hand to her cheek at the video of Isabella and two other girls doing body shots. "He's attractive."

"He is." She looked to Cam and watched with interest as his fingers tightened around his fork. "Not my type though. I have a thing for oversized thugs with bad manners and an inability to respect my privacy."

"Then you've come to the right place," Mickey quipped. "We have those in droves here."

Isabella laughed as she took her phone back from Portia and waited for Cam to look up. "Did you want to scroll through the rest of the videos on my phone or have you done enough digging?"

He held up a hand, "nope. I'm good. I promised your sister I'd respect your privacy and stop acting, as she called it, a caveman with no understanding of women."

Portia gasped, "she spoke to you like this?"

Cam held Isabella's eyes seriously, "I deserved it. I went too far. Isabella's family is protective of her and rightly so. When you have something special you take care of it, you don't treat it callously."

"What is so special about your sister-in-law?" Portia asked suddenly, "I mean I get she's rich and stuff but she's not really pretty and she's short. Dad, people don't talk to you this way."

"She runs the biggest technology security company in the world. She is the smartest person I have ever met, and I've met some really smart people." Isabella shook her head, "what the hell she sees in my doofus of a brother I'll never know but I'm so glad she married him because my life is so much better for it."

"Your brother is a good guy," Cam said seriously. "I've had dinner with him multiple times at Mikhail's. He's funny as hell."

"He rats me out to my mother every other week. He's a menace."

"What do you do that he tells your mom?" Portia latched on to more info and Isabella half wondered if she wasn't digging for something.

"My mother is a good Catholic woman who yells at me at least twice a week for not going to mass with her. In high school I made friends with a girl who had her belly button pierced and I was grounded a month. Imagine my mother's response to me doing anything now since I don't live at home. The night I went out with your dad the first time, she called me to demand if I was dating some old white rich guy just to give her a heart attack."

"She did. I was there," Cam chuckled. "It was funny."

"Hilarious," Isabella said dryly as she ripped a piece of chicken from Gideon's fingers. "If he vomits, I'm holding you responsible." Casper sighed knowing he was beat and jumped off Gideon's lap and skulked off to his new bed

"What does your mother think of you fighting with swords like you did with Gideon?" Portia asked suddenly. "If she's religious she probably doesn't like violence."

She was quiet and then nodded, "my mother understands my need to feel I can defend myself."

"I saw you beat up a guy with a gun," Portia insisted. "Would she be mad?"

"God yes," she groaned and rubbed her head, "and my sister already has it tucked away for when she's in trouble with mom."

"Why would she use it if she's in trouble?"

"Deflection," Cam offered with a smile. "Isabella and her siblings store information about each other. When their mother gets upset with them for something, they throw someone else under the bus." He chewed a piece of chicken, his eyes laughing. "When I was there when her mother called me an old rich white man, Isabella took the opportunity to throw her brother under the bus. Immediately her mother hung up and called him to get more info."

"Ingenious," Gideon said seriously. "Nobody can really get into trouble with mom if you're all passing the buck."

"Shut up Gideon," Isabella elbowed him laughing, "she hasn't caught on in almost thirty-eight years. My brothers started it when they were little."

"How did you learn to take apart a gun?" Portia asked interrupting the good humor.

Cam tilted his head in Isabella's direction also curious to know the answer.

"For a while I had considered joining the police academy. I needed to learn how to use a firearm. Clara has a friend on the police force who often refers women he meets on the job to her center. She asked him to train me how to use a gun. He wouldn't teach me to fire the gun until I learned how to put it together and take it apart." She scratched her temple slightly embarrassed. "In the end, I decided to complete my degree and choose a different path but the skills I learned while prepping for the academy stuck." "That's really cool," Portia said suddenly. She looked to her dad. "Can you teach me - "

The entire table shouted "no" simultaneously and Isabella couldn't help the chuckle erupting from her chest. Even Portia grinned at the response and as their eyes met across the table, Isabella considered for a moment, perhaps there was something worth saving with this girl after all.