The Bodyguard

Hannah begins to explain what she does for a living, which was concealed in the previous chapter. She details her duties as an EPA and emphasizes the importance of going unnoticed, which she can do well as a five-foot-five woman who is more often suspected to be someone’s nanny rather than their bodyguard. Robby drives Hannah home, and she tells him about the trip she booked to Toledo, but instead of agreeing to join her, Robby breaks up with her. Hannah is blindsided by this turn of events and protests, telling Robby that she loves him, but Robby does not think that she knows what love is. She thinks back to a year ago when the two of them first got together and remembers how Glenn told them he would blacklist them from the industry if either one left the company because of a breakup. As she is about to leave Robby, he tells her that she has “three deal-breaker flaws” (37) that he had been considering for months: she is always working, she is too serious, and she is a bad kisser.

With nothing else to do, Hannah begins going through her mother’s things and finds a beaded safety pin that she made her mother when she was a child. While Hannah intended to give her mother the pin day after she made it, she somehow lost it and only found it 20 years later in her mother’s jewelry box. Seeing it now, she puts it on a chain and begins to wear it every day, thinking of it as a talisman for good luck.

Back at work, Hannah waits to receive her first assignment since the death of her mother and tries to talk with Taylor about her recent assignment in Madrid, but Taylor does not give her much information. Glenn announces Hannah’s new assignment, and she is furious that it will keep her confined to Houston. While everyone in the company will be involved in the security for this particular client, Hannah will be the primary bodyguard for the “really, really famous” and “two-time, back-to-back Sexiest Man Alive” movie star, Jack Stapleton (47; 50). Before Glenn can say any more about the assignment, Hannah quits.

The only person who hears Hannah’s declaration over the chaos that erupts in the room is Glenn, who ignores and begins to break down Jack Stapleton’s past and outlines why the star is coming to Houston. After the opening weekend of Jack’s incredibly successful movie a few years ago, his younger brother, Drew, was killed in a car accident. Very little information can be found about the accident, but it is suspected that Jack was driving and that alcohol was involved. After surviving the accident in which his brother died, Jack went into hiding in North Dakota to stay out of the spotlight. He is only now returning to Houston, his hometown, because his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, and he intends to stay with her through her treatment despite the rift in his family that the accident caused. Jack’s movie studio has hired Glenn’s agency because he has many persistent stalkers, one of which is in Houston. While the EPAs do not believe that the stalker, a middle-aged woman who has not been as active in recent years, is particularly threatening, they are also made aware of the fact that Jack has recently been receiving online death threats from a person named Wilbur. Based on their evaluation of his messages, however, the EPAs also judge him to be a fairly low-level threat.

Glenn suggests that Hannah get a makeover to blend in better with her Hollywood client, and Robby suggests that Glenn should pick an entirely different person because of Hannah’s ordinary appearance. Glenn insinuates that Hannah must take the job whether she wants to or not, and if she does not, he will give Robby the promotion in London. Hannah agrees to take the job but refuses to get a makeover. Looking through Jack’s file, Hannah reflects on how aware she is of his celebrity status, and how she does not want to destroy the fantasy of who he is on screen. She hopes he will be unlikable like most of her other clients.

Hannah mentally prepares herself to avoid becoming “star-struck” upon meeting jack, but when he answers the door shirtless and assumes that she is his new housekeeper, she is speechless. Jack had previously told his studio that he did not want or need a security detail, so he calls his manager in front of Hannah to tell him that the arrangement will not work. Hannah briefs Jack on the security protocols and is annoyed by the fact that he is texting while she gives him instructions.

Jack tells Hannah that he expected his bodyguard to look different Underestimating her because of her size, Jack challenges her to take him down, which Hannah begrudgingly does with ease. They talk about his planned visit to his parents’ ranch the following day, but Jack tells Hannah that his parents cannot be made aware of any threats to his personal security, as it would worry his sick mother. Jack tells her that he plans to keep the security team offsite while keeping Hannah nearby under the guise that she is his girlfriend. Hannah storms out of Jack’s house, and back at the office, she refuses to implement Jack’s plan, which Glenn had already known about. She thinks of all the strange things she has done in the past to protect clients, and admits that this plan, though likely unethical, is not completely out of the ordinary.

Glenn attempts to force her hand again by bringing up the London position and tells her that she can pick her next project if this one goes well. Hannah is just about to give in when Robby declares that the plan is ridiculous because no one will believe she is a movie star’s girlfriend. Hannah drags Robby out of the room to fight with him about how strange he is acting since the breakup, and at this moment, Jack arrives. With everyone in the office staring, Jack drops to his knees and formally asks Hannah to pretend to be his girlfriend, and Hannah is impressed by his acting skills. He begs her to go along with his plan by asking her to think of his sick mom, and she agrees.

On the way to his family’s ranch, Hannah asks Jack some of the personal questions she was supposed to ask at their previous meeting. She learns that Jack’s older brother, Hank, hates him and has barely talked to him since their younger brother’s death. She also learns that he has recurring nightmares about drowning and is afraid of bridges, so much so that he makes her drive across the ones they pass as he gets out of the car and walks across. After giving these bits of information, Jack is evasive but wants to ask Hannah questions too. Hannah worries that his parents will not believe that she is his girlfriend, but Jack tells her that she is his usual type and that his parents do not know much about Kennedy Monroe, another celebrity whom the media suspects him of dating.

Entering the ranch property, Hannah and Jack encounter his brother, Hank, and Hannah wonders if Hank believes the rumors that Jack was driving drunk the night their brother was killed. Jack gets out of the car to talk to Hank, and Hank tells him that he does not want Jack there, trying to convince him that his mother is not fit to see him today. Suddenly, a cow peeks its head through Hannah’s window, and she notices a whole herd surrounding her. She screams, and Jack comes running back to the car but is amused by her fear of the cows. He jokes with Hannah about the cows, lightening the mood significantly.

At Jack’s house, Hannah takes up her post at his front door, where she unexpectedly sees Robby with Taylor. Toward the end of her shift, she decides to check on the security cameras that were previously set up at the house. On one of the monitors, she sees Robby and Taylor kissing on the job. Hannah panics and is enraged, but moments later Jack comes in and shows concern for her. Without realizing it, she starts crying, and he asks her again what happened, but Hannah cannot bring herself to tell him. Thinking about the unbalanced relationship between bodyguards and their clients, Hanna considers the fact that she already knows so much about Jack but can never tell him anything about herself because the nature of the relationship is not a real friendship, even though it is part of her job to build a sense of rapport with her clients.

Hannah is humiliated about crying in front of a client but feels even more hurt by the knowledge that within a single month, she has lost her mother, her boyfriend, and her best friend nearly all at once. She runs into Robby on the way to her car, and he tries to have a conversation with her, but she refuses. Robby keeps pushing to talk to her, but Jack shows up and tells Robby not to bother her, reiterates Hannah’s desire to go home. Jack also threatens to report Robby to Glenn, which Hannah later does herself, although she neglects to tell Glenn that Robby was kissing Taylor. Instead of making sure that Robby does not continue to interfere on a job to which he was not assigned, Glenn officially assigns him to video surveillance for Jack’s security detail. Jack drives Hannah home and coaxes her into telling him that Robby is her ex-boyfriend.