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“Don’t cut yourself.” She shook her head back and forth. “I hope Agent Porter follows up with the SFPD. He said he would when I talked to him tonight.”
“Call the police department tomorrow to make sure they’re going to send the report to Porter, like they said they would.”
“I will.” Hailey yawned and curled her legs beneath her. “Do you think they came after us once they saw us nosing around Marten’s hotel room?”
“Maybe. It’s clear they haven’t found anything in his hotel room, either, but they must think whatever he had or was going to say is important enough to risk raising a red flag for you and Ayala, because you two weren’t going to refute the story about Denver being among your kidnappers.”
“We need to find out what the key opens.” Hailey yawned again and her eyes drifted closed.
Joe swallowed his disappointment. This night hadn’t ended the way he’d anticipated, but he couldn’t expect Hailey to be in the mood after a sniper had put her in his crosshairs.
He smoothed a fingertip over the small cut on her face. He’d thought at first his attraction to Hailey had come from his memories of Lisette, the woman who had been out of his league and out of his reach years ago, but Hailey and Lisette occupied two different planes.
Lisette frittered away her parents’ wealth on selfish pursuits and status items meant to dazzle the poor boy from the wrong side of the tracks. Hailey put her father’s money to good use, helping others. Hailey used wealth as a tool, a means to a very good end.
And in the process, her goodness had done more to dazzle this poor boy than all the gold in Fort Knox could.
“Hailey.” He slipped an arm beneath her back. “Do you want me to carry you up to bed?”
She murmured and burrowed deeper into the chair.
He pushed up from the arm of the chair and grabbed a knitted blanket from the back of the couch. He shook it out and tucked it around her body. Then he kissed her cheek and whispered, “Good night, Hailey.”
Holding his hands out, he backed away from her sleeping form. He dashed upstairs, found the promised toothbrush and brushed his teeth. Then he grabbed a blanket from the bed that had been reserved for Ayala. As he reached for the pillows, he stubbed his toe on a hard edge beneath the bed. He flipped up the bedspread and nudged Ayala’s laptop farther under the bed. He swung by Hailey’s room and snatched a pillow from her bed for good measure.
When he got back downstairs, he wedged her pillow on the right side of Hailey’s body and threw the other two at the couch.
He eyed the length of the couch and shrugged. He’d spent the night in worse conditions than a too-short couch in a Pacific Heights mansion with a beautiful woman sleeping in a chair across from him.
He toed off his shoes and pulled down his jeans and socks all at the same time. He unbuttoned his shirt, yanked his T-shirt over his head and folded everything into a neat pile on the coffee table.
He settled one half of the blanket on the couch, anchored it with his body and pulled the other half on top of him for a cover. It took him several minutes to get comfortable. He made the best of it by rolling to his side and hanging one leg off the edge of the couch.
On his side, he had a clear view of Hailey snuggled into the chair. He had no intention of leaving her downstairs on her own.
What worried him was the growing feeling that he could never leave her side again.
* * *
HAILEY TURNED HER head and caught her breath. Was the crick in her neck from sleeping in a chair all night or from Joe’s life-saving technique of tackling her to the ground?
She rubbed her eyes, and a vision appeared before her. She rubbed her eyes again to make sure she wasn’t dreaming, and the vision only got clearer.
Joe’s bare leg hung from the couch, his toes touching the floor, the blanket slipping off his muscled thigh. The other edge of the blanket draped across his torso like a toga, and he certainly did resemble a Greek god.
The muscles she’d imagined and felt beneath layers of clothing appeared before her in an awesome display of maleness.
If that shooter had to take aim at her last night, why couldn’t he have waited until after she and Joe had made love? How inconsiderate of him to ruin the moment.
