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“But what? What criticism could you possibly have that you’re willing to risk your life for?”
“But…” His laughter slows, then his voice turns thoughtful in a way I’ve never heard before. “You never gave me anythingbutyour body. No eyes, no heart, no smiles – not while we were fucking. Your body was in my bed, and I’m telling you right now, your body is banging. Physically, you were right there, but in your head, you were always somewhere else.”
“Drake…”
I can hear the smile in his voice. “I didn’t give it a lot of thought, since I knew we were both there for the same reasons. No complications. No feelings. Nothing icky and weird. But I dunno, darlin’. If I’d gotten even a taste of the passion I saw in your eyes last week when your boyfriend walked in, I’d have taken us more seriously. You have fire in your heart, Libby. It’s bright and hot, and super fucking tempting, but it belongs to someone else.” He pauses for a moment, then gives a soft laugh. “I didn’t even know you were capable of it until now. And now that I know you were holding out on me, you only get a nine on my scale.”
“You’re a pig,” I grumble.
He laughs and takes another sip. “I would have married you already if I knew the fire that was inside your heart. I mean, we probably wouldn’t survive it, and lord knows we’d divorce by the seventh year, because no amount of fucking could make it tolerable to have a chick in my apartment around the clock. But I’d have tried. For you and that rockin’ body, I’d have tried.”
My heart races with odd nerves. Tiffany comes out of the file room with a meek smile, dashes back to the hall and drops into her squeaky chair, but despite the distraction she provides, my heart still races. “That might be one of the most romantic things I ever heard. Like, I think once you find your girl with the fire, you might even go longer than seven years.”
His chuckle is so throaty, so warm and cuddly, that I sit back at my chair and snuggle in.
“So, that brings me around to my call.”
I snort. “Of course it does. I thought you were calling for ass?”
“Nah.” He moves around on his end, gets more comfortable, then sits back again. “Tell me,Lizbeth, why your man is on TV right now.”
“What?”
I shoot up from what could have been the perfect posture for napping, toss my phone down and dash around my desk, and without even thinking to use my computer, I race across the office and into the boardroom.
The station’s facilities are nothing like those at Checkmate.Theyhave expensive, top-of-the-line technology – ironically, all Griffin – whereas we often settle for five-year-old throwbacks from bigger stations. It’s still Griffin technology, but it’s old, and when those other, bigger stations get upgrades, we get their hand-me-downs and a morale boost, since five-year-old devices are still better than the ten-year-old stuff we would otherwise be using.
I scramble along the boardroom table and snatch up the remote for the TV mounted to the wall, and flicking it on, I channel surf at lightning speed –click, click, click, click– until the logo makes my heart stop and I drop my hands.
The phone on my desk hangs from the cord, but Drake wouldn’t be Drake without making a second call and having it transferred to the new line.
The trilling sound coming from the phone on the boardroom table hurts my brain as I watch Gunner work to avoid the cameras parked outside Griffin Plaza. He walks with another man – young, perhaps Tiffany’s age, icy blond hair, dark blue eyes, and a body hidden under a suit that I know for sure sees the inside of a gym. He’s not large, but he definitely has a regular membership to a gym somewhere, and when he stands beside Gunner, or more accurately, in front of Gunner, the two men have similar shapes. Similar height. Similar widths. The other guy is smaller than Gunner, but not by a lot.
The phone continues to ring, buzzing inside my brain and insisting on attention, so while staring at the screen and refusing to look away, I blindly grope, swearing when I knock it over and it crashes to the table.
I snatch it up in a hurry, and slam it to my ear without peeling my eyes away from the TV for a single second. “Yeah.”
“Hi, Tate. I have an Officer Banks on line two for you.”
“Yeah. I got it, thanks.” I hang up and grieve the second it takes to look away from Gunner’s handsome form, then to locate the flashing number two and hit it. “Yeah.”
“You threw me!”
“Hush, stop whining.” I can’t not take notice of the sneaky tattoos that creep along Gunner’s neck and peek out from the top of his collared shirt. I can’t ignore his strong jaw, the way it ticks with anger, or his watchful eyes scanning the crowd as the blond friend tries to help him shuffle through the horde of people.
Never has Gunner accidentally been caught by the media outside his building. Not once in all the years since Griffin became an industry leader, so why now? Why today?
“What’s going on, darlin’?”
“I don’t know.” I walk to the end of the table so I’m closer to the TV, and stretch the phone cord as far as it’ll go so I can sit. “It’s strange, isn’t it?”
“Sure is. In all these years, he’s never been on TV.” And that’s why he’s a good cop. He thinks the way I think, he acts the way I act. “I feel a little starstruck. That dude was in my living room only a week ago.”
“Shut the hell up.” I pull the end chair out from the table and rest my feet on it so they don’t dangle. “You’re not starstruck. He’s not a celebrity. He’s just…”
“Theo Griffin…?” I hear the smile in his voice. “Who’s the blond?”
I shrug. “I think it might be his driver. Olly someone. G–Uh…” I pause and silently chastise myself for slipping. “Theo mentioned him a few times. Best friends, family, all that sort of stuff. Dude looks like he works out, so I’m thinking maybe his job title is driver, but the details skew more toward security.”
