Opening
After her mother’s death, Hannah Brooks—a razor-sharp Executive Protection Agent—tries to outrun grief by clinging to work, only to be benched by her boss, Glenn Schultz, and dumped by her coworker boyfriend, Robby. Her lifeline arrives as a curveball: protect world-famous actor Jack Stapleton back in Houston—a job she doesn’t want, for a client who doesn’t want her, while competing for a career-making London assignment.
She steps into Jack’s private crisis—family estrangement, a dead brother, a sick mother—and into her own, where professionalism is armor and vulnerability is the real hazard.
What Happens
Chapter 1: A Shark Without Water
Hannah staggers through the days after her mother’s funeral, sleepless and raw, clinging to motion as survival. She even buys two nonrefundable tickets to Toledo because her mother’s last wish is that she take a vacation. Ordered to take bereavement leave, she goes to the office anyway to lure Robby into coming with her.
She walks in on Glenn and Robby discussing her. Disheveled and shaking, she pushes for work—any work. Glenn delivers whiplash: the company is opening a London branch, and either she or Robby will run it for two years. Then the gut punch—she’s pulled from the Madrid job; Taylor goes instead. When Hannah argues that like a shark she’ll die if she stops moving, Glenn catalogs her bloodshot eyes and hoarse voice and sends her home to get her “shit together.” The chapter locks in her central conflict: she uses work to outrun grief, and now she’s being forced to be still.
Chapter 2: Three Deal-Breaker Flaws
Hannah lays out her craft. As an Executive Protection Agent, her small, unassuming presence is her advantage; she passes as a nanny or assistant, then switches to expert combatant and strategist in a blink. The job isn’t what she does—it’s who she is.
On the rain-soaked drive home, she invites Robby to Toledo. He goes quiet, then ends the relationship the day after her mother’s funeral, tossing back her own words about not being “that close” with her mom. When she admits she loves him, he sneers that she doesn’t know what love is. A flashback shows Glenn once warning their office romance would implode and extracting a promise they wouldn’t quit when it did. Back in the present, Robby lists her “three deal-breaker flaws”: she works too much, isn’t fun, and is a bad kisser. The breakup wipes out her last support and torpedoes her confidence.
Chapter 3: The Principal Is Jack Stapleton
A month crawls by. Hannah runs compulsively, does busywork, and sleeps on her closet floor. She finds a beaded safety pin she made for her mother at eight tucked in her mom’s jewelry box and wears it as a talisman—proof of a bond she wasn’t sure existed.
At the team meeting, she braces for Robby’s return and a fresh assignment. Glenn tees up something “juicy” and “absorbing.” Hannah’s hopes for an international escape crash when he says the job is in Houston. Then he throws a movie poster on the screen: Jack Stapleton. The room erupts. Hannah, blindsided, says, “You know what? I quit.”
Chapter 4: The Fantasy vs. The Reality
Glenn ignores the “quit” and briefs the team. Two years ago, Jack’s younger brother, Drew Stapleton, died in a car crash; rumor says Jack was driving drunk. He’s been a recluse in North Dakota since. He’s coming back to the family ranch near Houston because his mother, Connie Stapleton, has breast cancer. The family—including his father, Hank Stapleton, and older brother—is fractured.
The primary threat is a female stalker based in Houston, less active lately but still dangerous. Hannah is primary on the detail. Glenn orders a makeover so she can “pass” in Jack’s world; Robby pounces, saying she can’t. Glenn raises the stakes: if Hannah doesn’t ace this assignment, Robby gets London. Hannah accepts the job, refuses the makeover, and, alone with the file, confronts a complication—she has a quiet, longtime crush on Jack. She hopes the real man is arrogant, dim, or rude—anything to make him easier to treat like any other client.
Chapter 5: Not the Cleaning Lady
Hannah arrives at Jack’s rented mansion, instantly regretting the no-makeover stance when he opens the door shirtless. He’s less polished than on-screen—shaggy hair, glasses—and far more real. He mistakes her for the cleaning lady. When she clarifies she’s his Executive Protection Agent, he bristles; he never agreed to this. The studio forced security to “protect their assets.”
He spends fifteen minutes on a heated phone call while she waits on the porch. He relents just enough to let her in. She tries to deliver her standard briefing; he texts and mocks the scripted tone. He claims he’ll only visit his sick mother and stay home. To reset the dynamic, she coolly says she needs fingerprints, a handwriting sample, and a vial of blood. He reels at the blood draw until she explains his AB negative type matches hers, making her his on-call blood bank in an emergency. The reveal jolts him into taking her seriously.
Character Development
Hannah’s competence stays razor-sharp even as her personal life collapses. The assignment with Jack forces her to test whether professional detachment can coexist with emerging, inconvenient feelings.
- Hannah Brooks: Grief-stricken yet relentless; uses work as armor. The breakup detonates her self-worth, but the beaded safety pin hints at a deeper, steadier core she can grow from.
- Robby: Charming exterior, cutting interior. He exploits Hannah’s vulnerability, then undermines her professionally—ambition without empathy.
- Glenn Schultz: Gruff pragmatist who practices tough love. He yanks Hannah off the Madrid job but hands her the career-defining case, reading her limits better than she does.
- Taylor: Loyal friend and capable stand-in, a quiet counterbalance to Robby’s pettiness.
- Jack Stapleton: From fantasy to human—grieving, defensive, and angry at losing control. His initial resistance sets the friction that will test both his stubbornness and Hannah’s boundaries.
Themes & Symbols
Loss sits at the center, and the story funnels both characters toward it. Grief, Family, and Healing frames every choice: Hannah’s mother is gone; Jack returns for his mother’s illness while haunted by his brother’s death. Both dodge pain—Hannah by overworking, Jack by hiding—until circumstance forces confrontation. Their parallel family fractures hint that tenderness, not toughness, will be the real cure.
The novel’s engine is the gap between image and truth. Appearance vs. Reality runs through Hannah’s underestimated bodyguard persona, Robby’s handsome-but-cruel mismatch, and Jack’s fall from magnetic star to messy, complicated man. Meanwhile, Protection and Security is both literal—threat assessments, blood types—and emotional: Hannah is masterful at safeguarding others but has no defenses for heartbreak. The romance stakes crystallize under Love and Vulnerability, where opening up risks humiliation but promises connection.
The beaded safety pin symbolizes a hidden, enduring bond between Hannah and her mother. Found after death, it insists that love often registers in small, easily overlooked artifacts—the kind of proof Hannah needs to believe in softer truths.
Key Quotes
“You only say that because you don’t know what love is.”
Robby reduces Hannah’s confession to ignorance, weaponizing her grief to invalidate her. The line crystallizes his emotional cruelty and establishes the novel’s journey toward redefining love through care, presence, and respect rather than performance.
“You know what? I quit.”
Hannah’s impulsive reaction to the Jack reveal shows how close to the edge she is—and how thoroughly her coping strategies have failed. Quitting is less about the job than about refusing to be vulnerable again in a situation she can’t control.
“Like a shark, if I stop moving, I die.”
Her metaphor captures the survival logic of grief: motion as anesthesia. Glenn’s refusal to indulge it becomes the hard boundary that nudges her toward actual healing.
“Your AB negative matches mine. I’m your own personal blood bank.”
Hannah reclaims authority with clinical precision. The shock value breaks Jack’s dismissiveness, reframing her from nuisance to lifesaver and exposing the stark, unglamorous reality of protection.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These chapters strip Hannah down—mother gone, boyfriend gone, escape hatch gone—so the only way forward is through. The assignment with Jack is a pressure cooker: a hostile client, a credible threat, and a promotion on the line. It forges proximity and conflict, the raw materials for both romance and growth.
Stylistically, the tight first-person voice fuses gallows humor with ache, undercutting glam expectations and subverting tropes: a petite woman as bodyguard, a movie star as reluctant dependent, and a meet-cute that implodes. The fast pace mirrors Hannah’s frantic refusal to feel until she’s forced to. By the end of Chapter 5, the stakes—professional, emotional, and familial—are locked in, and the story is poised to test whether real safety comes from control or from connection.