“Enough of something that you’re passing up good women and the family we both know you want.”
Not sure how to get Kieran to understand, Hunt blew out a frustrated breath, and carved a hand through his hair.
In the heavy silence, Kieran hesitated, examining Hunt with an expression harder than Hunt had seen in sometime. “When is enough, though, Hunt?” he eventually asked.
“When she’s mine.”
Kieran snorted a laugh. “You’re that sure it will happen one day?”
Hunt cut through the slight tension with a smile. “Have you ever known me to fail whenever I truly want something?”
“No.”
“It’ll happen,” Hunt reassured him. “She just needs more time.” More than that, Hunt needed to get past this wall she had. He’d never believed in love at first sight until he met Lottie. Now that he’d gotten to know her over the past couple of years, his heart couldn’t see anyone else. It didn’t make sense. He often wondered if it was the challenge she presented that tempted him so. Until he looked into her eyes. It was justher.He wanted those heated eyes on him and him alone.
Hunt dipped his toast into his sunny-side-up eggs, and as he chewed, he said, “Besides, there is one very important reason that I’m not walking away.”
Kieran’s brows lifted. “Oh, yeah, what’s that?”
“She hasn’t told me to. She’s said everythingbutthat. No to lunch. No to dinner. No to breakfast. No to a date. But once I asked her if she wanted me to walk away for good, and she couldn’t answer me. In fact, she didn’t say a word, but just turned and walked away. There’s a reason she’s keeping me at a distance. Until I have that reason, I will wait.”
“Because she’s worth waiting for?”
Hunt gave a firm nod. “Damn right she is.”
Kieran studied Hunt for a moment longer, before giving a nod of understanding, and blessedly shifted the subject. “You must be sick to death of weddings.”
The past weekend Hunt had watched the head of Phoenix’s security, Archer, marry his match, Elise, in a small, intimate wedding. “I’m not,” Hunt corrected. “For every wedding there is a bachelor party, and those I like.”
Kieran tossed his head back and laughed. “You’re not wrong there.”
Every long-weekend bachelor party had been better than the last. Rhys’s was in Vegas. Archer’s was in Thailand. Kieran’s was in Costa Rica. Hunt’s bank account had never been emptier, but his soul had never felt fuller, minus the part that was missing Lottie.
Before he took another sip of his coffee, he asked, “Anything further come from the photograph?” Kieran had his own troubles lately. He’d become tangled in a web of deceit by a wife looking to blackmail her husband. In the end, Kieran’s photograph inside of Phoenix, shirtless with only a mask on, had been sprawled across the media.
Kieran shook his head slowly. “Not a peep. It seems Ronan looks enough like me that we pulled off the impossible.”
Ronan, a retired Navy Seal and security for Phoenix, had a similar build and features; the public simply believed what they’d been told. Which had been that the photograph was of Ronan at a private sex party. The media stayed atop Ronan for a while, until nothing new developed, and they eventually moved on to the next hot scandal. “Has it stirred up any trouble for Ronan?”
“Not that I’ve heard of,” Kieran confirmed, after finishing his sip of coffee. He set the mug back on the saucer. “I’ll be forever grateful to that guy. My identity stayed secret, and none of this shit touched Hazel.”
Hunt agreed with a nod. With that single action, Ronan had gained Rhys’s trust, along with Hunt’s, Kieran’s, and Archer’s. He’d also been promoted within the Phoenix security ranks. “The almost mention of the club in the media was too close for my liking.”
“No shit,” Kieran agreed.
Hunt and Kieran had both ventured into sex parties in college. When Phoenix opened, the club gave Hunt the confidentiality he needed. The masks kept his identity a secret. The club, until recently, had been an unbreakable fortress, as the clients had a lot to lose if their sexual preferences were exposed. For Hunt, with a recent promotion to commanding officer in the homicide division, and with his dreams set on being police chief, he could make no mistakes in his career, no missteps. One sex scandal, and his dreams would burn.
Hunt dipped his toast into the egg again when his cell phone beeped. One look at his screen had him finishing his bite and rising:Double homicide on corner of 8th and W 42nd.
He fired off a text:On my way.
“Breakfast over?” Kieran asked over the rim of his mug.
“Duty calls.”
“We’ll see you tonight?”
In Phoenix.Hunt grinned, rapping his knuckles against the table before dropping a twenty-dollar bill. “You know I wouldn’t miss it.”
