Page 67 of Her Passionate Hero

That stopped her short. She looked at him in confusion. Good. At least he didn’t need to hear her trotting out the same old shit. He picked up her hand and placed it back on the side of his head.

“Go back to what you were doing. You were giving me comfort, remember?”

She gave a shy nod.

“Now, can I hold you?”

“You’re a devious bastardo, you know that, don’t you?” she said as she melted into his arms.

“All’s fair, Cariña. All’s fair.”

Chapter Nine

Aliana was awake from her nap, looking at an email from her insurance company when her phone vibrated with a text. It was Hunter. He and Dalton were outside, he’d seen her light come on, and wondered if he could give her an update on what he’d learned. She told him to give her ten minutes, and she’d open the door for him.

By the time he knocked softly on the front door, she had cocoa and coffee on the stove along with the fixings for a ham sandwich and more of her grandmother’s Marlenka honey cake.

“You got all of this done in ten minutes? Just what all do you get accomplished in a day at your job?”

“What can I get for you?” How could his words embarrass her and make her happy at the same time?

“Definitely coffee and please God say you don’t make it like Beatrice Price.”

“What are you talking about? She makes good coffee.”

“Oh yeah, she said she made it special for us because we’re sailors. Never let her make the sailor batch. It won’t just put hair on your chest, it’ll put hair on your palms.”

She giggled. “What else do you want?”

“Load me up.”

“Do you always wear a gun?” she asked. She saw the butt of it under his jacket as he sat down at the table.

“I have a permit to carry a concealed weapon. I kind of feel naked without it. It comes in handy even at the most innocent events imaginable. I’ll tell you the story about a friend’s wedding sometime.”

“A wedding? You needed a gun at a wedding?”

“It’s a long story,” he said, taking the mug of coffee she offered.

“You’re joking me.”

“Oh, Cariña, I wish I was. It was a scary twenty minutes.”

“Scary?”

“I hate it when women and children are involved, and this time there was a newborn.”

“Are they okay?”

“We had one fatality, but not the ladies or the baby.”

She went to him, and put her arm around him, resting her cheek on his silky hair. She could tell that even the one death still weighed heavy on him.

“But you saved so many.” She still didn’t understand how they needed guns at a wedding, but if he wasn’t sharing, she wouldn’t probe.

“Yeah, I guess.”

She kissed the top of his head and straightened.