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“Yeah?”
I swallowed hard, unsure I knew how to do this. I should have come up with a plan before his name even escaped past my lips.
Time to wing it.
“We need to go back,” I told him.
“Go back? Go back where?” he retorted.
My eyes left the road, and I glanced over at him. He was staring straight ahead, his focus on his driving. Even still, I knew he was listening.
“We have to go back to Harper Security Ops,” I explained.
“Not right now.”
“But I need to learn how to defend myself, Kane,” I argued. “I can’t do that if I’m at your place with you.”
We’d come to a red light, and Kane used that opportunity to look over at me. There was something unreadable in his expression, but I was well aware of the intensity of it. “That may be so, Ellery, but if you’re with me, you aren’t going to have to worry about being able to defend yourself. I would never let anything happen to you.”
This man was making it impossible to think straight. Not only did he already send me buzzing at just the mere sight of him, but when he said things like that while he looked at me the way he was, I didn’t know how I was supposed to not want to believe in something other than my current reality.
“I appreciate that. I really do,” I told him. “But you can’t be around me twenty-four hours a day. You have to work, don’t you?”
Kane grinned at me.
Grinned.
I read about many fictional men who grinned or smirked or whose lips twitched and how all of those things managed to set a woman’s panties ablaze. I thought it was simply storytelling. I thought it was mostly about conveying an emotion or a feeling. Ineverbelieved it happened in real life.
For me, it was such a profound moment, too, because I hadn’t ever experienced that before. I hadn’t ever had a guy look at me like that, forcing me to feel nothing but desire for him.
How was that even possible in this situation? There was a threat of certain doom surrounding me, and yet, I was here feeling tingles between my legs for the first time in my life, because a decent guy grinned at me.
The light changed to green, and Kane focused his attention back on the road. “Lucky for us, there’s a lot of staff at Harper Security Ops.”
“Lucky for… us?” I repeated, a clear question in my tone.
“Us. You and me.”
He couldn’t be serious. At this point, I was convinced he had to know precisely what he was doing to me when he said things like that.
“I’m not sure I understand,” I remarked.
I watched as Kane took in a deep breath before he said, “It’s obvious to me that you were aware of at least some of what we do at Harper Security, but perhaps you don’t know everything. Evidently, you knew we could offer self-defense and weapons training. What you might not know is that we also offer private investigation services, and bodyguard and personal security services. You’ll be taking advantage of both of those.”
“What? I can’t do that.”
Kane brought his truck to a stop and looked at me again. “We also have a kidnap and ransom unit, and that’s one I’m not prepared for us to have to engage because you think you can’t accept help in this situation. I’m not sure why that is just yet, but I know there can’t be a good reason for it.”
I wasn’t sure what part of that statement I was supposed to respond to. I knew Harper Security offered a variety of services, but the truth was that I hadn’t paid attention to much besides the self-defense training. That was what I was concerned with, so that was what I focused my research on.
Since I didn’t want to think about being kidnapped or Kane having to “engage” that unit in the event Patrick found me didn’t immediately decide to kill me, I figured it was best to focus on something else.
“I don’t mind accepting some help, but this seems extreme,” I reasoned. “What if you get hurt?”
“Better me than you,” he fired back without an ounce of hesitation.
And that did it.
