Charming Like Us (Like Us Series: Billionaires & Bodyguards Book 7) Read online

  Contents

  Title

  A Note from the Authors

  Character List

  1. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  2. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  3. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  4. JACK HIGHLAND

  5. JACK HIGHLAND

  6. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  7. JACK HIGHLAND

  8. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  9. JACK HIGHLAND

  10. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  11. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  12. JACK HIGHLAND

  13. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  14. JACK HIGHLAND

  15. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  16. JACK HIGHLAND

  17. JACK HIGHLAND

  18. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  19. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  20. JACK HIGHLAND

  21. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  22. JACK HIGHLAND

  23. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  24. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  25. JACK HIGHLAND

  26. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  27. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  28. JACK HIGHLAND

  29. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  30. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  31. JACK HIGHLAND

  32. JACK HIGHLAND

  33. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  34. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  35. JACK HIGHLAND

  36. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  37. JACK HIGHLAND

  38. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  39. JACK HIGHLAND

  40. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  41. JACK HIGHLAND

  42. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  43. JACK HIGHLAND

  44. OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  Epilogue

  Banks Moretti - Key West House

  Also by Krista & Becca

  About the Authors

  Acknowledgments

  Charming Like Us Copyright © 2020 by K.B. Ritchie

  First Edition - Digital

  All rights reserved.

  This book may not be reproduced or transmitted in any capacity without written permission by the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any names, places, characters, resemblance to events or persons, living or dead, are coincidental and originate from the authors’ imagination and are used fictitiously.

  Cover image © Stocksy

  Book cover design by Twin Cove Designs

  www.kbritchie.com

  A Note from the Authors

  Charming Like Us is the seventh book in the Like Us Series. Even though the series changes POVs throughout, to understand events that took place in the previous novels, the series should be read in its order of publication.

  Charming Like Us should be read after Headstrong Like Us.

  LIKE US SERIES READING ORDER

  1. Damaged Like Us

  2. Lovers Like Us

  3. Alphas Like Us

  4. Tangled Like Us

  5. Sinful Like Us

  6. Headstrong Like Us

  7. Charming Like Us

  8. Wild Like Us

  9. Fearless Like Us

  10. Infamous Like Us

  11. Misfits Like Us

  12. Unlucky Like Us

  Character List

  Not all characters in this list will make an appearance in the book, but most will be mentioned.

  Ages represent the age of the character at the beginning of the book. Some characters will be older when they’re introduced, depending on their birthday.

  THE OLIVEIRAS

  Rodrigo & Sônia Oliveira

  Oscar – 32

  Quinn – 22

  Joana – 19

  THE HIGHLANDS

  Jack Sr. & Eleonor Highland

  Jack – 27

  Jesse – 17

  THE FAMOUS ONES

  The Cobalts

  Richard Connor Cobalt & Rose Calloway

  Jane – 24

  Charlie – 21

  Beckett – 21

  Eliot – 20

  Tom – 19

  Ben – 17

  Audrey – 14

  The Hales

  Loren Hale & Lily Calloway

  Maximoff – 24

  Luna – 19

  Xander – 16

  Kinney – 14

  The Meadows

  Ryke Meadows & Daisy Calloway

  Sullivan – 21

  Winona – 15

  THE SECURITY TEAM

  These are the bodyguards that protect the Cobalts, Hales, and Meadows.

  Kitsuwon Securities Inc.

  Security Force Omega

  Akara Kitsuwon (boss) – 27

  Thatcher Moretti (lead) – 29

  Banks Moretti – 29

  Farrow Keene – 29

  Quinn Oliveira – 22

  Oscar Oliveira – 32

  Paul Donnelly – 27

  Price Kepler’s Triple Shield Services

  Security Force Epsilon

  Sinclair (lead) – 40s

  Ian Wreath – 30s

  Vance Wreath – 20s

  O’Malley – 27

  …and more

  Security Force Alpha

  Price Kepler (lead) – 40s

  …and more

  1

  OSCAR OLIVEIRA

  Ten times a day, I question why I’m the bodyguard to Charlie Keating Cobalt. The sun just set, and I’m already at number eleven. Why me?

  Because I can keep up.

  Because despite the fact that he’s actively trying to lose me in a crowd that’s fifty people deep, I’m still six feet behind him. I could lunge and grab his thin, billowing white button-down, untucked from his black jeans.

  No one has noticed the famous twenty-one-year-old yet.

  Thanks to the fact that Charlie is moving through a crowd of tourists who are all too enamored with the glittering Manhattan skyscrapers. They’re too unaware that a celebrity just passed them by, with his unkempt, sandy-brown hair that takes flight with the summer wind.

  Charlie veers to the left, suddenly, and his head disappears behind a group of taller men. If it were my first day on the job, I’d think he was trying to lose me in the crowd. But it’s not my first day. Not even my second.

  I’ve been Charlie’s bodyguard for over five years.

  So I don’t think it.

  I know he’s trying to lose me.

  Here’s an annoying fact: His success rate is about 50%.

  Here’s a less annoying fact: Before me, his success rate was 100%.

  Charlie’s previous bodyguards were making him look like a gold-star Houdini. They had zero shot to catch up to him. If Charlie wanted to disappear, he’d vanish into thin air.

  With me, he has to try a little fucking harder, and that’s why I’m still on his detail after all these years. Can’t lie, it’s not rose petals and holy water over here. It’s never stopping. Not for a second. It’s stress on stress on stress, and I’m terrified of the day I lose this.

  Being his bodyguard.

  Because it’ll be like going from a hundred million miles an hour to being glued to the ground. I’ve been at Charlie’s speed for so long, I don’t know how to stop anymore.

  I watch him near a department store, and instead of following his footsteps, I keep walking ahead with the throngs. Officially, I lose sight of him. It’s a calculated risk, one with opportunity cost.

  And as I make the decision, I know exactly what it’s going to cost me…and my client.

  I hear overwhelmed, elated, shrill screams of a young girl.

  “Ohmygod Charlie COBALT!”

  Her hi
gh-pitched “oh my gods” are probably echoing down the New Jersey Turnpike. Can I blame her? I grew up thinking the Cobalts walked on water. All three famous families are considered American royalty, but the Cobalts are the gods among the princes, and now that I protect them, I still think it.

  The difference is, I’m not a teenager envious of their flawless intellect and their arm-in-arm impenetrable bonds…their closeness that made my family life seem unspooled and messy.

  Because I’m older now, and I’m an incredibly intelligent motherfucker. And I’ve come face-to-face with the Cobalts, who are just as messy, just as dysfunctional, just as chaotic as my family still is.

  And it made me love the Cobalt Empire even more.

  So they still walk on water, but I’m one of several men who picks their asses out of a Great Lake when they slip and begin to drown.

  Call me The Pro.

  The media already does.

  More screaming blisters the New York City air, and with a swift turn, I round the corner into an empty alleyway.

  I keep a relaxed pace, comms earpiece situated in my ear. The July heat tries to suction my navy-blue button-down to my chest. Curly pieces of my hair brush my forehead, and I push them back and walk. Normally bodyguards alert their lead if they lost sight of their client. Yet, it’s pointless, if I radio in.

  Fuck, I remember Charlie’s past bodyguards and their hysteria over comms.

  I lost him. I lost him! Fucking shit, I lost the kid!

  He’s just gone. I swear I had eyes on him.

  I can’t…I can’t find him anywhere.

  Fuck this, I quit.

  Having to deploy a search and rescue mission for your client is embarrassing. Epsilon is still licking their wounds after losing the girl squad in Anacapri, which was about a week ago. The youngest girls in the famous families are fledgling teenagers, and they might as well be the babies, the treasured irreplaceable diamonds.

  You don’t lose them.

  Charlie is different. For one, he’s an adult. For another, he does this all the fucking time. If I asked for a “search and rescue,” I know Akara and Thatcher would help me track him, but there’s not much they can actually do.

  They don’t have more or better intel than me.

  Anyway, I’ve got it covered.

  Halfway down the alleyway, I reach the back door of the department store. I check my watch and then lean a hip against the brick. Waiting. After a second, I pull out my cell to call an Uber Black.

  Being the 24/7 bodyguard to a Cobalt, to anyone really, was never my plan, but it also wasn’t a far leap from professional boxing.

  I love my job.

  There’s really nothing like it in the world. The fact that every day is different, that it’s like being on a drug, adrenaline coursing through my veins, well…the only time I felt like this was in the ring. But it’s different here.

  Better.

  The backdoor swings open. My client’s normally messy hair looks even more wind-blown. How many strangers’ hands just ran through his hair?

  I don’t know.

  The sleeve of his white button-down hangs limply off his shoulder, ripped and dangling by a literal thread. Popped buttons expose his bare, lean chest, and fresh pink marks mar his fair, white skin like fingernails raked his body.

  His neck is rubbed raw and red. I bet someone grabbed him around the throat. Tugging him closer, maybe. This was the cost. I knew he’d be bombarded and touched.

  Guilt doesn’t assault me. I’m not weighed down seeing him hurt. I’m just relieved that I predicted right and he exited this backdoor.

  When I first started out on his detail, I got sucker-punched with regret. Thinking I could’ve done a better job. Thinking I should’ve thwarted this and that touch. But this is the best job anyone has ever done for him.

  Five years later, I understand there’s a bigger picture here.

  I have to choose my battles with Charlie.

  He meets my gaze, unsurprised by my presence, and casually steps into the alleyway, kicking the door shut behind him.

  Charlie lights a cigarette. “I thought maybe you’d take the hint this time,” he says and blows smoke into the warm night air.

  “You don’t want me on your detail anymore, then ask for a transfer.” It’s the same reminder I give him daily.

  We go round and round on this carousel and it never really ends.

  “It’s not just you.” His yellow-green eyes flit to me. “Anyone. I don’t need a constant shadow parading behind me.”

  “Bring that up with your parents then.”

  He may be twenty-one, but his mom and dad are overprotective, and they’re not going to let any of their children—let alone Charlie, the eldest son of the Cobalt Empire—prance around the city without literal protection.

  It’ll just never happen.

  It’s a battle he’ll lose every time.

  It’s why he scuffs his shoe against the asphalt and drops the subject. I scan his skin again, noticing blood seeping through his wrinkled button-down. Someone must have scratched him deeper by his ribs.

  “You’re bleeding,” I tell him. “You want me to call Farrow?” He’s on the med team.

  But mention of my best friend causes Charlie to roll his eyes. Farrow isn’t Charlie’s cup of tea, mostly for the fact that he’s attached to Charlie’s least favorite cousin, Maximoff Hale. But more recently, Maximoff and Charlie have put their feud to bed.

  Charlie will often say things to me like, “You have a strange choice in friends.” “You sure you don’t want to reevaluate your friendship with him?” “Why are you friends with a self-righteous, arrogant asshole?”

  Farrow and I go way back.

  But I don’t shoot the shit with Charlie like that.

  I’d give him a half-second look and say, “Worry about your own friendships, or lack thereof.” He’d take the diss with an impressed smile.

  Charlie and I aren’t friends.

  Let me make this clear.

  We.

  Are.

  Not.

  Friends.

  I am not a buddy-guard. So when Charlie makes small remarks that edge on lethal injections, I don’t play into his hand. He can do that with his actual friends.

  In the alleyway, Charlie barely glances at the bloody spot and says, “It hardly even stings.” He flicks his cigarette to the side, and I catch a faint note of disappointment in his voice.

  I tense. “You at least want a Band-Aid? You’re ruining your shirt.” My phone vibrates against my ass, but I don’t retrieve my cell. It’s more likely it’s a personal text. I swivel the volume of my radio and listen. Seeing if I missed anything over comms.

  The line is close to dead.

  Comms have been quiet tonight. Not surprising. We all just got back from Italy yesterday, where Farrow and Maximoff had their wedding in Anacapri. Not much is going on now.

  Most of the families are resting in Philly. And the ones in New York—mainly three of Charlie’s brothers—are safe and sound in their Hell’s Kitchen apartment at the moment. Charlie is the only one gallivanting across the city in the middle of the fucking night like a blood-thirsty vampire.

  Hey, he is legitimately as popular as Edward Cullen could ever be.

  Charlie finally glances at the red stain on his white, shredded button-down. “No Band-Aid. It’ll sell more if it has my blood on it.” He says it so casually, like that’s the most normal reaction in the world.

  “CHARLIE!!”

  Our heads swerve at the same time. Charlie’s adorers have found him, and they’re running toward him like he can conjure water in a drought.

  I don’t ask him where he wants to go or what he wants to do. I grab his wrist and tug him towards the other end of the alleyway.

  “Ohmygod OSLIE IS REAL!”

  Fuck.

  Every tendon in my body tightens, but I don’t drop Charlie’s wrist. Mainly because there’s a 50% chance the guy will let the stampeding pack of fans
plow him down if I do. And I’ve taken his wrist before. I’ve had to physically pull him in my direction plenty of times.

  Never did it elicit this reaction.

  Never did it hinder my job.

  Until those fucking rumors.

  Charlie Cobalt and Oscar Oliveira are a couple!

  Farrow and Thatcher, two Omega bodyguards, decided to not only date their clients but put a ring on them. And it’s fucked me to hell. Because now fans think SFO is some pretend security firm as a front to hide relationships with clients. So they think Charlie and I are an item, and it’s so far from the truth.

  Adrenaline and annoyance make a home in my body. Charlie seems unperturbed but he keeps glancing at me and then back at the girls. We reach the curb just as the Uber Black skids to a halt in front of us. Timing isn’t always my friend, but I’m thankful it’s in my corner tonight.

  Charlie doesn’t argue with me as I open the door and guide him inside.

  “Where’d you set the address?” Charlie asks me as I shut the door.

  “Your apartment.”

  “Can I have your phone?”

  I know the drill. As I pass it to Charlie, I tell the driver. “Frank, we’re about to change our destination. Is that a problem?”