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Camila’s shoulders tensed around her spine, her smile vanishing into thin air. “What? Kissed me? Because I hate to break it to you, but that was pretty mutual.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Fuck.Fuck, he was so bad at this.
“What did you mean, then?”
The question hit Roman right in the chest, and his answer came shoveling out. “I shouldn’t have been so impulsive.”
Camila’s brows shot upward. “That’swhat you’re worked up about? Not…”
She clamped down on her bottom lip, but nope. No way was he letting that go. “Not what?”
A beat passed. Another joined it, both of them conspiring to kill him. Finally, she said, “I thought maybe you had regrets because of your wife.”
Ah, hell. Of course her mind had gone there. How had he not seen that coming?
“No,” Roman said. “That’s…no. Gabrielle has been gone for six years, and I’ve”—he paused, searching for the right way to phrase it—“been with a handful of women since then.”
He’d grieved Gabi terribly. They’d only been married for eighteen months when she’d died, but she’d been his college sweetheart, the love of his life. Still, he understood now that she was gone, just as he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was here, and he was healthy, relatively young, and definitely human. So, yeah, he’d had sex with a handful of carefully selected women, with the specific intent of getting off, then getting out. He’d taken care of the physical need the same way he would any other, nothing personal and definitely nothing intimate.
But the kiss he’d just shared with Camila had been miles from that. She’d lit him up from the inside, sparking an intensity he couldn’t explain, and worse yet, that hewanted.
His defenses warned him to end this conversation, to get her safely inside and let that be the end of it. He had no business letting his emotions rear their dangerous little heads.
But he’d already run from Camila once rather than just being honest. He owed it to her not to repeat past mistakes.
He owed her as much of the truth as he could tell.
“I’m sure it doesn’t come as a huge surprise that I’m not so big on emotions,” he said quietly, the tension in his shoulders easing at her soft laugh.
“What? You? I never would have guessed.”
“Funny.” Roman glowered, but—of course—he couldn’t make it stick. “Anyway, the bank robbery, seeing you after what happened last year, that kiss…it’s all just been a lot to process. That’s not exactly easy for me.”
Camila pressed her smile between her lips. “Todayhasbeen a lot. But impulse isn’t always a bad thing, you know.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” he said, and, to his surprise, she didn’t push.
“Thank you for making sure I got home okay. And for…well, everything. While I’d never wish a bank robbery on anyone, I’m grateful you were there. The truth is, I’m not sure I’d have made it through those first few minutes without you next to me.”
Roman shook his head. “I don’t know about all that, but I’m glad I could help. Solidarity?”
“Solidarity.”
And as he walked her all the way to her apartment and waited until she was safely inside with her door locked tight, Roman realized two things. One was that, despite his defenses, he couldn’t seem to do anything other than go all in when it came to this woman.
The other was that it didn’t scare the shit out of him as badly as it should.
10
Stealing three hundred thousand dollars in a bank robbery was a rush. Getting away with it for the thirteenth time in a fucking row?
Christ, it was priceless.
Archer sat back in the bedroom of the entirely nondescript house he’d rented with fake credentials (thank you, dark web. Seriously, the internet was a goddamn treasure trove if you had half a brain) and looked at the pile of papers on the tiny desk in front of him. The plan itself was straightforward. Five cities. Three banks each over the course of a month. Just when the heat cranked up and the cops started getting extra vigilant—poof. They disappeared, only to pop up in another city a couple of months later, repeating the cycle until they had enough money to retire on.
Because here was the thing. Archer wasn’t an idiot. He knew he couldn’t make a career out of robbing banks. Yeah, he did meticulous research and planning, and yeah, when it came to understanding human nature and all the reactions that went with it, he was more intuitive than most. He wasn’t about to waste that knowledge on some mindless job he’d have to work his ass off at for thirty-five years just to scrape by. But the three hundred thousand dollar paydays came with a hefty fucking risk. Archer knew the odds.
Good planning would only get them so far. The more banks they knocked off, the higher the chances they’d get caught—that was just statistics. There was a shitload of strategy at play logistically, too. After all, large cash deposits into regular bank accounts tended to raise eyebrows, not to mention trigger system alerts that ended up in scrutiny. A string of large deposits, all made by a guy with no source of regular income? Archer might as well walk into a police station and surrender.
