Page 2 of Ruthless Enforcer

The second was the waiter who hasn’t served a drink since I stepped into this gallery.

The third is a thick-necked bastard in a tuxedo who keeps touching the inside of his jacket every time Clara moves.

Sighing, I set the half-empty glass of warm champagne on the tray of a passing waiter. Mandy Reed is going to be unbearable about this.

Three days ago, she asked me to kidnap Clara Whitlock.

I asked if she’d lost her fucking mind.

Then she told me why—Clara Whitlock had been marked for the same trafficking ring I pulled Mandy out of ten years ago.

Which is how I ended up in a museum full of Montana’s wealthiest people, watching James Whitlock’s favorite niece while trying not to start a war.

The Reyes and Whitlock families have maintained an admirably peaceful relationship for years by staying the fuck away from each other. James Whitlock keeps his people out of our business. We return the courtesy. Everyone gets to enjoy birthdays and major holidays with approximately the same number of relatives they started with.

It’s a good system—which makes what I’m about to do spectacularly stupid.

The man near the service entrance moves, and so do I.

The picture Mandy sent me didn’t do Clara justice. I expected an innocent girl, not the woman in the couture dress, an understated black with a slit that leaves one long, creamy leg bare when she moves. Her upswept red hair makes the Irish half of my heart beat hard, and those emeralds she’s wearing make my other Colombian half feel strangely patriotic. In her heels, she has a good four inches over the older man next to her.

It strikes me again—she’s fucking beautiful. Elegant. There’s nothing girlish about her. She looks like a woman who knows her mind—my personal catnip.

Which is very inconvenient. I was prepared to save her. I wasn’t prepared to want her.

Then she tilts her head back and laughs at something he says. Not the polished society laugh everyone in this room learned in the cradle. A real one, head tipped back, eyes bright, completely unguarded.

I lose two seconds watching her.

It’s two seconds more than I can afford tonight. I close the distance.

I stop in front of her. “Clara Whitlock.”

Her gaze moves over my face, and her eyes widen as recognition hits. They’re green enough to make the emeralds at her ears and throat look cheap. For one fraction of a second, something flashes across her face. Surprise, definitely. Maybe something else too.

But not confusion. She knows exactly who I am, proven when she says, “You’re Gabriel Reyes.”

The way she says it, you’d think it was a communicable disease.

One of her bodyguards appears at her shoulder. “Miss Whitlock?”

She doesn’t take her eyes off me. “It’s fine.”

He hesitates.

Clara gives him a look. She waits until he backs off before returning her attention to me.

“Good help is hard to find.” I smile, flashing my dimples. My mom used to say they’re the devil’s fingerprints, that God gave me my face, but the devil added the charm. They’re a weapon I’m not afraid to wield.

She snorts. “What do you want, Reyes?”

I hold out my hand. “At the moment? You.”

Her eyes narrow.

I crook my fingers at her. “Try not to make it weird, sweetheart. I’m rescuing you.”

She looks at my hand, making no move to take it. “A Reyes rescuing a Whitlock?”