THE TAYLORS [H.S]

17.

Harry.

Stress balls didn't help. I never understood the point of them, and I didn't understand why I continued to try and use them to relieve any sort of tension that floated around in my body when all it made me want to do was throw it out the window.

I was lying on my bed, throwing the small ball in the air every few seconds. I altered between that and actually squeezing the life out of the thing, but nothing worked to ease my mind.

I had ventured off to 'bed' twenty minutes ago, half expecting to have Anna fly through the room like a tornado and demand to take the bed. I would of rolled my eyes and hauled her ass to the couch, shooing Liam and Niall off to bed like school kids.

Nothing came though. I had been listening to them all laugh amongst themselves for fifteen minutes, though within the last five, their voices and quieted down and multiple pairs of feet made their way down the hallway.

I had held my breath when I waited for one of them to barge in, but again, I was mistaken. Anna Taylor was one of the most stubborn people I had ever met, and yet, she continued to surprise me every moment I was in her presence. I thought she would of kept that streak up and not give up until she got the bed, but instead, she seemed to have followed Niall into his room.

See, I was use to rich girls. Stuck up girls. The girls who thought they were better than everyone else because they grew up in the privileged life. Anna had all the money and power to be the snobbiest person alive, and yet she was far from it, even if she pretended she wasn't. She was a living, breathing dragon and I was all for her fire.

Not that I would ever tell her that, because her fire did boil my blood at times. I could appreciate her at assertiveness and her stubbornness, though not when it was directed at me when I had been instructed to protect her life. I asked for her the bare minimum and she always had to go against me.

I dragged my hand down my face with a groan, suddenly thinking about the current sleeping arrangements.

Her brothers would hang me by their feet if they knew their precious sister was about to go to bed with one of the cheekiest men I had ever met. I say cheeky instead of anything more vulgar purely because Niall resembled an excited Labrador. He was harmless for the most part, though that didn't mean he didn't try his luck like any man his age, especially with a beautiful woman who willing was climbing into his bed.

Anna was also in a vulnerable state, and people within an vulnerable state tended to make poor decisions and regret them soon after. Whether Anna liked to admit it or not, she was grieving. She wasn't processing the death correctly, and I knew it was bound to bite her in the ass harder than anything had ever before.

I knew I shouldn't care, because she was just a job and I was a major asshole at the best of times, but having a wildly untamed and vulnerable Taylor, who had access to more money than I had ever seen in my life, was a dangerous combination.

I internally groaned to myself as I pictured different scenarios of her in my head, which forced me to sit up.

I owed it to her brothers to keep my promise and keep her safe, in all forms of the word. I hated to admit it, but I owed the Taylor brothers my life. They had found me scavenging the streets of England with Niall and Liam when we were nothing more than scrawny teenagers, trying to find something to eat behind the bakery of our town.

The Taylors had been on vacation when we had all first met them, their father had a business meeting and decided to drag the kids up there for 'family bonding,' though when we had met them, they were by themselves, no adult in sight.