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“No, I’m being dead serious.”
And he looked like he was. “I talked to Everett yesterday.”
“Why the fuck would you want to do that?” Before she could respond, he shook his head. “Don’t understand why you want to be around any of those bastards.”
“You…” She cleared her throat. “You know what I do for a living?” If he knew, that meant he’d been keeping tabs on her, didn’t it?
His grin flashed. It was the first time he’d smiled at her. And, as someone who had what she thought of as a pretty good smile—one that worked well at disarming people—his grin absolutely floored her. Mostly because there was only one way to describe his smile.
Killer.
Slow, sensual, the grin spread across his face and had her heart rate kicking up. It was the kind of grin that would, oh, make a woman want to drop her panties. Yeah, she’d just gone there. His smile counted as being sexy as sin. Twice as hot. And she found herself lifting a hand and fanning herself.
Mid-fan, she stopped. Fisted her hand. What is happening here? So, yes, she had an, um, crush. A very long-standing crush. But she did not need to be overreacting to a handsome man’s smile for goodness’ sake.
He slowly eliminated the space between them. And even though she’d faced off against more twisted killers than she wanted to count, Avalon found herself almost retreating from the man who’d saved her life.
His hand lifted. His fingers curled under her jaw. “Why do you like playing with killers?”
“I’m not playing with them. I’m getting answers.”
His grin slowly faded. “Liar.”
Chapter Three
This whole situation was way, way out of control. She tried to get back on track. Hard to do, when his touch was making her whole body ache. “Everett named four bars that he visited before he was caught by surprise and left handcuffed. Moonshine. Whiskey Sour. Midnight Rose. And LeBlanc’s.”
A nod. “And that’s why you’re here tonight. And why the cops stopped by. Good to know. For a minute there, I thought you’d tracked me down because you’d just never been able to forget me, and you were dying of unrequited love for yours truly.”
Her mouth opened. Remained open. What could have been a squeak emerged. What. The. Hell?
“It was the kiss that made me suspicious. When a strange woman kisses you like her very life depends on it…” His head lowered. His mouth hovered over hers. “It does give a guy ideas.”
“I’m…” Staring at his mouth. “I’m not strange.”
“Sweetheart…”
The endearment rumbled from him and made her toes curl.
“You play with killers for a job. If that doesn’t qualify as strange, I’m not sure what does.”
Again, she wasn’t playing. “I get their stories in order to help people. When you can understand their motivations, when you can see how they hunted, why they selected certain victims, you can learn to stop them. You can be on guard. You can?—”
“You want to know why he hunted you, don’t you?” Low. Deep.
She licked her lips.
“Never caught. Still out there. The arsonist—the fire killer who got away. Why’d he pick you? Why were you a victim? Did you spend all these years playing with monsters because you’re trying to figure out what made you a victim?”
Okay, so, she’d been with him five minutes, and the man was psychoanalyzing her. Very effectively psychoanalyzing her. Why not just rip her skin away and peer straight into her soul?
His thumb brushed over her lower lip.
“Instead of being scared and hiding from the world,” he murmured, “you went straight for the monsters. Takes one hell of a lot of guts to do something like that.” There was no missing his admiration. “Of course, it’s also dangerous as fuck.” He let her go. Stepped away. Put his hands behind his back. “But you do you, sweetheart.”
The second time he’d called her sweetheart in that deep, dark voice of his.
“Thanks. I usually do.” She lifted a slightly trembling hand and shoved back her hair. Big problem. Normally, she could sit across from a convicted killer and maintain her pose of fake calm. But with Beau, she was ragged at the edges after only a few moments of conversation.
