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“I said no.” With that, I shoved the contract into my purse and stood. “Enjoy the seafood feast. I’ll messenger the contract over to PSI once I’ve signed it. One thing, though—I don’t want you on my security team. Have a nice day.”
I was almost to my car when I felt Luke behind me. Not heard—felt. I whirled around, my hand clutching Timothy’s mailbox keychain so tightly it was an actual fist. “Did I not make it clear that our meeting was over?”
“Why are you so pissed off at me?” In the harsh light of midday, Luke looked positively mouthwatering in black jeans, a button-down dress shirt in a shade of blue that almost exactly matched the color of his eyes and a lightweight black blazer. The sun lit the bronze highlights of his hair on fire, and suddenly it was all I could do to stop myself from running my hands through it. “I’m not the one trying to buy you with promises of heaven on earth. Dear old Daddy is. I’m just pointing out what you already knew. Why get mad at what you’d already spotted as manipulation?”
“Because you’re twisting the knife in deeper just to see what sort of reaction you’ll get.”
“I’m not—”
“You are. And now that you’ve gotten that reaction—where your victim flees in pain—you want to absolve yourself of any culpability of causing that pain. So here you are chasing after me in a stupid parking lot, desperate to point out how innocent you are and demanding that I see you as blameless. Well, I don’t. I’m calling you on your bullshit, Luke Keyes. I’m looking you straight in the eye and telling you that youareculpable for my pain, and you will take responsibility for it. Or are you a gutless wonder?” I added with saccharine sweetness, the twist of my mouth so bitter it almost hurt. “Are you going to refuse to own all the shit you pull?”
“So I’m either a sadist or a coward, and nothing in between? Again, neat trick. By offering only two choices, neither of them good, that boxes me in with nowhere to go.”
“I can’t help it if you don’t like hearing the truth.”
He stopped, so close that if he sighed, his chest would have brushed against mine. “And what truth is that?”
“That you’re not a nice man. You think you are, but you’re wrong. You’re exactly what I thought you were the moment I laid eyes on you—a monster.”
His hand lifted to brush a tendril of hair back behind my ear, like he had the day before. “And you’re not?”
“Of course I am. You see, that’s the difference between us—I have no illusions about who and what I am. You do, because it’s becoming increasingly clear that you see yourself as a hero. News flash, Luke—you’re not.”
Irritation darkened those terrifying x-ray vision eyes of his. “Lady, have you forgotten I’ve chosen a career that saves people from the worst kind of danger this world has to offer?”
“I haven’t forgotten anything.”
“Hell, I even signed up to keepyousafe from someone who’s obviously a few clowns short of a circus. How is that not heroic?”
“It would be, if you were motivated simply to help. You’re not.”
A small growl escaped him. “Then what the fuck’s my motivation?”
“‘Being wrong about people happens so rarely I get a kick out of being genuinely surprised.’” I quoted his own words back at him, then watched understanding bloom in the growing storm in his eyes. “You’rebored, Luke. I don’t think I’ve ever met a more bored person in my life. People bore you.Lifebores you. You do what you do not to help people or make the world a safer place. You do it because you’re bored and you’re looking for some sort of distraction that’ll give you a reason to exist.” I started to turn away, but he caught my elbow in a tight grip. “What the hell do y—”
“Don’t turn around.” The softness of his tone immediately put me on alert. It was the kind of tone people used when a bee landed on your arm and they warned you not to move. “Keep looking at me, okay?” As he spoke, he reached into his back pocket and fished out his phone. “Put your hands on my waist.”
I searched his eyes for half a heartbeat before doing as instructed. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know for a fact, but I’d be willing to bet we’re being watched by your secret admirer.”
I gave myself a half a second to cuss under my breath before I changed my face to one of absolute calm. “Why do you say that?”
“Because there’s a single red rose on your windshield. This denotes—”
“Passion,” I supplied, not even thinking about how easy it was to finish his sentence. “Love. An amorous gesture. Well, that’s certainly a new wrinkle, and much more substantial than the flower pics. It could mean—”
“His feelings for you are changing, becoming more insistent. Also, it’s just a single rose, an intimate gesture of a lover. My guess is he’s nearby because—”
“He needs to see my reaction. He couldn’t get that particular thrill with the pics, so—”
“He’s decided to escalate. This fucker’s compelled to get closer to you—”
“So that he can better enjoy my torment.”
“Or, maybe to see if you’re at last becoming receptive to all his batshit-crazy overtures.”
“As if.” I shuddered and closed my eyes to stop the desperate desire to look around. God,God, how I wanted to hunt this bastard down. “I swear, when I get my hands on this guy—”
