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Sunshine spilling down from a cloudless sky, glinting off his freshly minted wedding band as he drove to work. A chest full of idiot happiness, thinking that the life in front of him would be loaded with anniversaries and milestones and maybe even kids. Grandchildren. A pair of rocking chairs on the porch.
Forever.
The caller ID flashing over his dashboard with the wordsNorthview Hospital. The simple, straightforward words the doctor had used when Roman had arrived fifteen minutes later, still convinced there had been some sort of mistake.
Your wife, Gabrielle, was hit by a car while she was on her morning run. She sustained multiple serious injuries, and despite our every effort, we were unable to save her…
She’s gone.
So, yeah. Good omens were for suckers. He’d stick with cold, hard reality, thanks.
At least reality would never blindside him, and it sure as hell wouldn’t make him think he was cut out for something as happy-happy as forever.
That ship had fucking sailed.
Roman kicked his feet back into motion, his dress shoes clipping out a steady cadence on the concrete as he boxed up his memories and slid his focus back into place. He’d dealt with Gabi’s death six years ago, doing all the Agency-required grief counseling and taking off enough time that his boss didn’t give himtoomuch shit for coming back to work too soon. But Gabi wasn’t going to be any less gone no matter what Roman did. Throwing himself into work had been better than wandering around the apartment they’d shared, still expecting her to come home and tell him it had all been a huge mistake. It had been better than diving into a bottle or losing his life savings to a gambling habit or mindlessly fucking his grief away. And it had sure as hell been better than getting all up in a bunch of feelings over something he couldn’t change.
So what if he’d spent the last six years avoiding anything that would make him feel…well, anything? Sure, it had distanced him from his old man, his old friends, and his new unit-mates, but it was safer than the alternative.
He couldn’t lose anyone else.
Grumbling under his breath, Roman opened the door to the bank a few blocks from the FBI field office he called home and stepped over the threshold. Wrapping the case he’d worked with the Intelligence Unit last night—his second in the span of a year—had afforded him a little flex time this morning, and he’d put off his errands for far too long. Remington Financial was in one of the city’s historic buildings, with polished marble floors, high ceilings, and a long, mahogany front desk adorned with brass fixtures. Despite having an old-world aesthetic, like a museum or a library, the bank hadn’t skimped on security. As was the case with any financial institution nowadays, bullet resistant security glass separated the tellers from the bank patrons, and there were cameras mounted in several strategic yet subtly placed points along the ceiling and walls. Not that those were a guarantee that nothing bad would ever happen—Roman knew better than damn near anyone that you couldn’t one-hundred-percent something like safety—but they sure didn’t hurt.
Making his way farther inside the well-lit space, Roman lifted his chin at the security guard, who returned the single-nod gesture before refocusing his attention to the side of the lobby where the bank managers and loan officers sat at their desks, quietly working. The large, airy space was divided by a combination of glass cubicle partitions, potted trees, and strategically placed furniture, offering privacy without ruining the open concept.
There were only two other customers on the opposite side of the lobby from where Roman stood, an older white man with graying hair who was chatting with the teller through the bullet-resistant barrier at the front desk and a dark-haired woman with her back to him, headed for the table bearing deposit and withdrawal slips. Her cream-colored sweater dress hugged a set of knockout fucking curves, and Roman couldn’t help but let his eyes linger on the hypnotic sway of her hips keeping time with the clack-clack-clack of her slim brown boots as she walked. Heat tackled him in an uncharacteristic punch he hadn’t felt in…Christ, had it been a year since Camila had hit him like a sexy, sassy hurricane at the Crooked Angel, flirting with him for half the night and smiling in encouragement as he'd flirted right back? A year since he’d felt that undeniable, red-hot pull of want for a woman who wasn’t Gabi? A year since that want had quickly become panic as Camila had turned to kiss him goodnight in the back alcove of the bar?
But the only thing Roman did less than flirt was panic. He’d been so thrown by the punch of feelings that he’d pulled back from Camila as if she’d been on fire, sliding out of the booth with a weak “I’m sorry” and not stopping until he was in his car, headed far away from the dark-haired beauty and all of his intense, burning want for her.
Not his finest moment. Camila probably thought he was a consummate dickhead for how he’d behaved that night, yet the memory of the way she’d stirred him up was apparently still as strong as ever. For Chrissake, he was eyeballing random women in the bank and wishing they were her.
The woman turned, and oh hell.
“Oh.” Camila’s deep brown eyes flared wide at the same time Roman took a step back in surprise. Funny, the move didn’t seem to endear him to her. “What areyoudoing here?”
“I bank here,” Roman said, because a) it was true, and b) he couldn’t get a more cohesive thought past the image of her perfect, peach-shaped ass still burning through his brain.
Camila pursed her lips, which didn’t help the state of affairs in his pants. “So do I.”
“I got that part,” Roman said. He’d been trying to lighten the mood, but her expression told him in no uncertain terms that he’d missed the mark.
“Hm.” She straightened her shoulders, her chin tilting upward in a way that shouldn’t be sexy, but really fucking was. “Well, I’ve got a lot of errands to run this morning, so…”
Some unexplained and very unexpected urge screamed at him to tell her to stop. Okay, so he couldn’t entirely blame her for the chilly treatment. He really had stiff-armed her advances after hours of flirting so intense, they might as well have been foreplay. But it wasn’t as if he’d taken her number and ghosted her, or—worse yet—slept with her,thenghosted her. She didn’t have to be so frosty.
Roman opened his mouth, fully prepared to tell her so. But he was interrupted by a gruff male voice, raised high enough for everyone in the lobby to hear.
“Nobody move! This is a robbery.”
4
Camila had redlined on adrenaline and it wasn’t even ten o’clock in the morning. For a split second, her brain couldn’t make sense of anything in front of her. Not the gorgeous, broody FBI agent who’d squashed her ego like a bug last year. Not the startled cries of the other bank patrons, all of whom were wild-eyed and stunned into place like statues. Not the man standing in the main entryway of the bank, his face entirely covered by a black tactical mask but his voice still clear and loud as it pushed past the fabric barrier.
“Nobody move! This is a robbery.”
Just like that, running into Kai Roman wasn’t the worst part of her day.
The man was flanked by two others, all three of them decked out in black combat gear, and moving through the bank with near-military precision. Camila’s pulse ricocheted, pressing so hard and so fast at her throat that oxygen was suddenly at a premium. The leader stopped in the center of the lobby—oh, God, they were all carrying assault rifles, and shit, was that body armor?—raising his weapon high enough for everyone to get a good, terrifying look.
