He had to make sure she was safe himself.
“Where are your roommates?” he asked as they entered her apartment. It was completely quiet, so he assumed they were alone.
“They’re both working full time jobs and in meds school like I am. All three of us come and go at all hours.”
He followed her through the apartment to her room. As they stepped inside, he couldn’t help grinning a little as he looked around. The place was a cluttered mess. She had books everywhere, med school texts and what looked like an array of mystery novels. There was a laundry basket of clean clothes on her dresser that hadn’t been folded, and she nearly tripped over her own tennis shoes as she headed to the closet to grab a couple of duffle bags.
“Not big on cleaning, are you?” he asked.
She looked back over her shoulder to glare at him. “I’mbusy.”
It looked like he’d touched a nerve. He let the subject drop as she started to stuff clothes into one of the duffle bags. Moving to the nightstand, he picked up a framed picture of a man and woman on her nightstand. He could see the resemblance to Amy in their faces.
“Your parents?” he asked.
Amy paused, and he saw sadness on her face before she forced a smile and reached out for it. “Yeah. They died when I was eighteen.”
“How?”
It was probably in the information that Klonsky sent him, but he didn’t bother to read it all. All he knew was that she had no living family.
She tucked the picture into her duffle bag with her clothes, then she started collecting her textbooks for the other one. He got the feeling that she was trying not to look directly at him so that he couldn’t see the sadness there.
“It was a car accident. They were on their way to dinner when a drunk driver ran a light and T-boned them.”
“I’m sorry.”
He took a step closer to her, even as he told himself not to do it. Comforting her when she was upset led to sex last time, and he didn’t want that to happen again.
Except, he really did. No matter what he told himself, he was burning for her.
“Thanks,” she said, still not looking at him as she packed a makeup bag. “It was right before I was supposed to start college. I ended up taking a year off to deal with it. That’s why I’m only in my second year of med school.”
She finally turned to face him again and froze in place when she realized how close he was standing. Her head tilted as she looked up at him. Her pale green eyes were so captivating this close, and he couldn’t make himself look away. She was so beautiful, with her sexy glasses and mussed hair.
His pulse raced and he almost lowered his head to kiss her, but the sound of the apartment door opening interrupted the moment. Reaching around to put his hand on the gun tucked at the small of his back, he started to leave the room, but a woman’s voice made him pause.
“Amy? You here?”
“It’s one of my roommates,” Amy said, pushing past him.
He stayed close to her as she went to the living room to greet them. The women looked harmless enough, and he had no reason to think they were associated with the Italians, but he was still on edge. He could barely focus on the conversation as she danced around their questions about where she’d been for the past two days.
“And who’s this guy?” one of them asked, blatantly checking him out.
“This is my new boyfriend, Brogan.”
He knew that she was making up a convincing cover story on the spot, especially as she continued to explain that she might not be around much for a while since they were in a new relationship and wanted to spend a lot of time together. It was a decent excuse, but he didn’t like it, mostly because there was an entirely unwelcome surge of warm pleasure in the center of his chest at her words.
The sooner this was over, the better.
9
AMY
Being abducted was a pain in the ass, and not just because of the fear and panic. She missed a shift at work and all of her classes for the day. Smoothing things over with her boss wasn’t easy, but he agreed to give her another chance despite not showing up because she was a good worker and had never done anything like this before.
But she couldn’t afford to miss any more classes.
