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“Are you going to lead the way to that pillow?” He folded his arms, tucking his hands under his arms. “Or have you changed your mind?”
“Because that kiss you laid on me was supposed to deter me?”
“It wasn’t meant to deter or persuade. It just...was. If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been trying to keep you at arm’s length, too. I’m not sure I’m capable of that anymore, unless you want me to. Then I’ll try like hell just to keep you close.”
“That’s a lot of words.” She moved around the corner of the counter and cupped his jaw with one hand. “Why are we pretending? Why are we fighting against what’s been clear from the minute we met on Fisherman’s Wharf?”
“Because you have baggage and I have baggage. Because we don’t know if this is real or we’re feeling it because we have a shared threat hanging over us.”
“Right now—” her hand slipped from his face to his neck, where she wedged her fingers beneath his shirt and caressed his warm skin “—I don’t care about any of that.”
He clasped her hand and raised it to his lips. He kissed each one of her knuckles. “Right now, there’s just this single moment.”
Lacing her fingers with his, she took a step back and pulled him along with her. “You’ve never been upstairs, have you?”
“I’ve never been invited.”
“I’m inviting you now. I even have toothbrushes up there.”
“Then it’s a done deal.”
Still holding Joe’s hand, she walked upstairs with him trailing behind her. She didn’t say another word, afraid of breaking this spell between them.
Her bedroom door stood open. She dropped his hand and crossed the room to the window. “You have to see the view.”
He stood still at the entrance to the room, his solid frame outlined by the doorjamb. He whispered across the darkness, “I’m looking at the only view I wanna see right now.”
His words sent a thrill through her body, which tingled in all the right places. She never would’ve guessed Joe McVie would have all the right moves and all the right words.
She stretched out her hands. “Come to me, Red.”
His long stride ate up the distance between them, and he took her hands, squeezing them lightly.
She made room for him at the window, and their shoulders nestled together. Dropping her head to the side into the crook of his neck, she said, “Isn’t it beautiful?”
He draped his arm over her shoulder and twisted his head to the side to look at her. “The most beautiful view I’ve ever—Oh my God, get down!”
And the tender moment ended with Joe hooking his arm around her neck and yanking her to the ground as glass shattered around them.
Chapter Ten
As his heart practically jumped out of his chest, Joe caught a bead of blood on Hailey’s cheek with the pad of his thumb.
“Are you hit? Are you all right?”
“Hit?” Her glassy dark eyes widened. “Hit by what? Why did you throw me down? Where’d the glass come from?”
Joe ran his hands over her body in a poor imitation of what he’d had planned for her in that giant bed. “Hailey, the glass is from the window. Look.”
She raised her eyes to the window that looked out on the spectacular view of the bay, which now sported a jagged hole. “What happened?”
“Someone took a shot at you through the window.”
Her body, still safe beneath his, jerked. “What do you mean?”
“Someone had you pinned down with a laser on your forehead. Thank God I saw it before he got off the shot.”
She began to shake. “No. That can’t be. That’s not possible. It was a light from the street.”
“A red dot of light on your forehead?” He wrapped his arms around her trembling frame. “I’m Delta Force, remember? I know what a night-scope laser looks like.”
She buried her face in his chest. “What if you hadn’t come over to look at the view?”
“Not possible. You called and I came.” He kissed the top of her head and then brushed some slivers of glass from her hair. “Can you move? I want you to crawl to the bed and then get on the other side of it, on the floor.”
