GUARDED 

Sofia Reyes spent seven years letting Caleb control everything — her music, her image, her life. Her Uncaged Tour is supposed to be the first thing that’s entirely hers. No ex-manager breathing down her neck, no man with a clipboard deciding what version of her is allowed in the room. Just Sofia, her tour, and her own rules for once.

Then someone leaves a Polaroid on her dressing room vanity. A photo of a barefoot girl on a Montana truck tailgate, laughing like she doesn’t know what cameras are. On the back, in sharp angry ink: Casey was real. Sofia is what they sold.

Nobody calls her Casey anymore. Nobody should even have that photo.

Roman Hale doesn’t do celebrity security. He runs Vanguard Protection for real threats, not pop stars with paparazzi problems. Then he sees the envelope — no stamp, no return address, hand-delivered past arena security like it was nothing — and he stops seeing a pop star. He sees a perimeter that’s already been breached and a threat that’s only getting closer.

Sofia thinks Roman is another man trying to put her in a cage. Roman thinks Sofia is a woman who doesn’t understand that the person leaving those notes isn’t reaching for the star. He’s reaching past her, all the way back to a girl from Montana who thought she’d gotten out clean. One of them is going to have to be wrong about the other.

Guarded is book one of The Vanguard Series — romantic suspense with heat, grumpy protective hero, forced proximity, fake dating, and a threat that gets very real very fast. Spice level 2-3.

Sofia Reyes has exactly one plan for the summer: headline her own tour, run her own life, and never again let a man with a clipboard decide which version of her is allowed onstage. Seven years of that was plenty. The Uncaged Tour is hers — every set list, every spotlight, every gloriously reckless decision included.

Roman Hale has a plan too: not this. He runs Vanguard Protection for actual threats, not glittery pop stars with paparazzi problems. He’d rather be anywhere than guarding a woman who treats his safety rules like dares and fires him roughly once a day.

Then one paparazzi photo of the two of them goes viral, and overnight the grumpy man in the charcoal suit is Sofia’s rumored new boyfriend. The internet is obsessed. Her label is thrilled. Roman is appalled. And Sofia decides that if the whole world already thinks they’re together, she might as well enjoy watching him squirm.

Fake dating was never in the security plan. Neither were the hotel-room arguments, the backstage almost-kisses, or the way Roman kisses like he forgot the whole thing is pretend.

But someone’s been leaving things in her dressing room. A Polaroid. A name no one’s called her in years. And Roman is the only one who realizes the person behind it isn’t chasing the pop star at all — he’s reaching past her, all the way back to the girl from Montana who thought she’d gotten out clean.

She thinks he’s just another man trying to cage her. He thinks keeping her alive is the job. Neither of them planned on the part where it stops being pretend.

Guarded is the spicy, fast, funny opener to The Vanguard Series: grumpy/sunshine, fake dating, forced proximity, a bodyguard who loses every argument, and one very real threat humming under all the chaos. Spice level 2–3.