Page 55 of Velvet Vaughn

Remi considered it and slowly nodded in approval. “It’s clean. Nothing to memorize, nothing that contradicts what people can find out about me. I’ll keep my own name and background and just omit the part about COBRA Securities.” He narrowed his eyes at Leo. “Are you good lying to people you’ve worked with for years?”

The question landed harder than Remi probably intended. Leo picked up his wine, twisted the glass a quarter turn, and set it back down.

“No,” he answered honestly, “but I’m better at it than I want to be, apparently. I lied to my sister last night and made it sound like a weather report.” He shook his head. “I’ll manage.”

“That’s the spirit.” Remi stood and started clearing plates, waving Leo off when he moved to help. “I’ve got it. You cook nothing, you clean nothing. Them’s the rules.”

“That seems backward,” Leo argued. “You prepared the meal; the least I can do is clean it up.”

Anja patted his arm. “Choose your battles.” She picked up her glass and headed for the living room. When Remi was done, he joined them, and they discussed potential suspects until late.

Remi stood and stretched. “I’m taking the first-floor bedroom off the kitchen. I want to be between the doors and the stairs, so anybody coming in goes through me before they get to either of you.”

“You don’t have to—” Leo started.

“It’s not a courtesy. It’s positioning.” Remi replied easily, with no drama in it. “You two are upstairs. I’ll have the alarm armed and the perimeter sensors live before I rack out.”

It was, Leo had to admit, hard to argue with a man who’d clearly thought about the workings of the house more carefully in a few hours than Leo had thought about the machinations of anything in years. Plus, the room he claimed was massive with its own bathroom.

Remi took a slow walk around the ground floor, checking windows and door sensors. With a goodnight, he disappeared. A minute later, the strip of light under his door went dark, but Leo doubted he was going to sleep yet. His theory was confirmed a few seconds later when the bluish tint of a TV snapped on.

And then it was just the two of them.

Anja stood and took his empty wine glass, loading it with hers in the dishwasher before heading up. Leo followed, killing lights as he went, the old habit of a man who lived alone. The top floor had a landing with a window seat and a hallway containing six impressive suites. At the far end of the corridor, two doors opposite each other were open and readied for occupants.

Ten feet apart. He’d known that was the arrangement since they’d arrived, and he’d tried not to think about it all day with the same energy he’d tried very hard not to think about Anja’s long, silky hair and how good she smelled.

She stopped at the door to the room she’d claimed, her notes against her chest, and turned to say goodnight.

And Leo was just done.

He was weary of watching her run his life with that infuriating competence, of the distance he’d been keeping between them in hallways, and of the thing they’d done and walked away from. Neither of them had uttered a word about it since she’d reappeared in his life less than two days ago and started carrying a gun on his behalf. And he was damn tired of being vigilant when nothing else in his life was safe enough to bother being careful about anymore.

“Anja.”

“Don’t.” It was barely a whisper, but she didn’t move. “Whatever you’re about to say, forget it. Get it out of your mind. We’re working. It’s a bad idea.”

“I know it is.” He took a step toward her, and she stayed put, which told him everything the word don’t hadn’t. “I’ve had months to think about how reckless it is. I’m out of ways to keep deciding against it.”

“Leo.”

“Tell me to go to bed and I will. Mean it, and I’ll never bring it up again.”

She stayed silent. He closed the last of the distance, slid his hands into her hair, and kissed her. The notes fell out of her hands and hit the floor between them with a thump. For one suspended second, she went still against him. He braced for the gentle hand on his chest, the we can’t, followed by the retreat behind the wall she’d kept up so well all weekend.

It didn’t come.

She kissed him back, one hand curling into the front of his shirt, pulling him in instead of pushing him away. Five months of deliberate distance collapsed all at once in the dark, and Leo stopped thinking about all the reasons it was a bad idea.

#

Anja knew, even as her notes lay forgotten on the floor at her feet and she kissed him greedily, that she was making a colossal mistake.

Leo was her client. She was the wall between him and whatever was circling outside that iron and limestone fence. There was a name for what happened to protection details when the protector stopped seeing the principal as a problem to be solved and started seeing him as a man she wanted in her bed. The name was dead client. She’d watched it happen to good operators, albeit not at COBRA Securities.

Not to mention the fact that one floor down, behind a closed door, was the newest guy on the team, and he would absolutely form an opinion if he wandered upstairs doing a security check and found her wrapped around the man she was supposed to be guarding.

Every one of those facts was true, and every one of them was a reason to plant a hand on Leo’s chest, step back, and say goodnight in the flat voice she’d been using on him for two days.