Page 79 of Nightfire

The table looked really pretty. It looked even better when Chloe sat down. Mike gamely scraped some black off his toast and buttered it, slathering it with jam to cover the charcoal taste.

Chloe was cheating. She was sipping a cup of tea—no way to burn tea—and delicately chopping the head off a soft boiled egg. Mike helped himself to the scrambled eggs, ignoring the shells. When he bit into one, he just swallowed. Hell, it was protein.

It was a gorgeous morning. The sun was rising behind the building but a warm gentle glow off the ocean shimmered from the open French door that gave out onto a little balcony. The sky was that glorious blue only southern California seemed able to produce and the sea was calm, with only a few wavelets looking like lacy ruffles.

Mike felt an enormous sense of peace settle over him. He smiled at Chloe and she smiled back. Then schooled her face to a disapproving frown. “You didn’t give me much to work with,” she said and shot him a reproving look. “I think I used up everything in your fridge. We need to go on a food run, don’t you think?”

Mike froze, the happiness he’d been feeling just a second ago fizzing out of him like air out of a leaky balloon. The world and all its problems, the events of the day before, rushed back into his head on a black tide.

He took her hand and chose his words carefully. “Honey—” He breathed in deeply, bracing himself. Might as well get it over with. “Honey, I don’t like the thought of you out and about right now.” That was putting it mildly. The thought of Chloe out, a target for these unknown scumbags, drove him a little insane. “We don’t have a handle yet on who attacked you yesterday. Until then, I’d be happier if you just…stayed here.”

A little line appeared between her eyebrows. “Stay here? In the house? Until when?”

Mike clenched his jaws. “Until we know more about who attacked you.”

“But—one is dead and one is in the hospital, apparently not talking. Am I correct?”

He clenched his jaws even harder. He had to focus to unlock them. “Yeah.”

The line between her brows deepened. “But…does that mean you think I should stay in here indefinitely?”

This was the hard part, the part that was driving him crazy. If he knew anything about women—and he did—she was not going to like being ordered about. Though to his mind, Chloe was now definitely his, his to protect and to care for, Mike realized he hadn’t actually said The Words. And females liked The Words. Or at least he thought so, because here he was treading in unfamiliar waters. Nothing more than the occasional ‘honey’ in bed when he couldn’t remember the woman’s name had ever passed his lips.

The fact was that Mike felt bound to Chloe by bands of steel, immutable and unbreakable. She was his family now. He’d lost one, and he was not going to lose her. No way.

How to say any of that to her? To propose that she be locked up in his house 24/7 until he was sure it was safe to come out? And who knew when that would be?

Chloe liked moving around, quite natural for someone who’d spent her childhood years basically in a hospital bed. She enjoyed her daily walks along the beach, she enjoyed coming into the office, she liked shopping and going to bookstores and tea shops.

She also liked soft, welcoming surroundings. Her apartment was a delight to be in, as opposed to Mike’s place which was functional and bare.

He winced as he looked out the kitchen door into the living room area. Spare, unwelcoming, with one huge sofa, one huge coffee table and a humongous TV. Nothing else, not even a rug on the floor. This was so not Chloe, and yet he was proposing to lock her up in here.

She was going to rebel and he was going to put his foot down and he hated the thought. Just hated it. As far as he was concerned, Chloe was It. He wanted to love her and pamper her. He wanted to give her whatever she wanted. She had more money than he did, but he was doing okay. More than okay. He wanted to shower her with presents, do what she wanted to do, go where she wanted to go.

He wanted to make her happy. And one day into their being a couple—and that might be entirely in his own head—he was proposing locking her up for an unknown period of time.

Because there was no question. There was no way he was letting her out while there was even a suspicion of a fucking Russian gangster targeting her. No way.

If she got mad at him, screamed at him, he’d take it because no way was she stepping into danger.

He might lose her by keeping her safe.

The thought of it—the thought of losing Chloe…well, it was unthinkable. Not going to happen.

“Mike?” she repeated softly. “You want me to stay here indefinitely?”

His jaws hurt, he was clenching them so hard. He could actually feel a gritty shard of enamel breaking off. “Yeah.” His voice came out guttural and hard. “That’s what I think.”

He was vibrating with tension, ready to do battle, ready to do what it takes, but sick in his heart at the thought.

“You think I’ll be safer here than elsewhere?”

“Fuck yeah!” The words shot out of him. “Yeah,” he repeated, forcing his voice to be a little less insane-sounding.

He and his brothers had done a few modifications to their apartments. He had a door that wouldn’t be too shabby in a bank vault, to be opened only by a key pad. He’d lined the walls next to the door with steel panels, then covered them with drywall and painted them over. All the windows were ISO 9001, ten layers of Mylar-coated glass. Essentially, you’d need an RPG to get in.

There was no real platform for a sniper to get them. A sniper on the ground wouldn’t have a shot. Too acute an angle, too high up. And a sniper on a boat would have a very long shot on a moving platform.