“Your shoulders aligning themselves with your earlobes was my first clue.”
Busted.
Blowing out a windy breath, she forced her shoulders down. “I care because I don’t want to see a good man die,” she told him truthfully.
“Are you sure I am a good man?”
“If you are who Grafton says you are, then your reputation precedes you.”
He was quiet after that. Too quiet. With no conversation to use as a distraction, she was forced to focus on nothing but his intense stare. It was enough to make her shift from foot to foot.
When she couldn’t stand it a second more, she added, “And besides, I’m pretty good at reading people.”
“Don’t give yourself too much credit.”
Wow. Okay. So… “You don’t like me much, do you?”
“I don’t know you.”
She chuckled, but there was no humor in it. “That’s true. But it doesn’t change the fact that you don’t like me.”
Angel neither agreed nor disagreed. As always, his expression gave nothing away. Funny, since she got the impression that beneath his cold, calculating facade roiled a fiery cauldron of emotion.
“Do you mind if I ask why?” she asked.
“Why what?”
“Why you don’t like me.”
“What is there to like?”
She wasn’t sure what she’d expected him to say, but it wasn’t that. “Excuse me?”
“I said, what is there to like?”
“Yeah.” She pursed her lips. “I heard you the first time. What I should have said was, was zur Hölle, dude? And in case you don’t speak German, that means what the hell.”
“You work for him.” Angel hooked a thumb over his shoulder, and her attention snagged on his hand.
He had gorgeous hands, all broad-palmed and long-fingered. Once upon a time, hands as strong and beautiful as his had moved over her body, giving her pleasure unlike anything she had experienced before or since. Seriously, those hands should have been registered as national treasures.
“So do you,” she pointed out. “Work for him, that is.”
“Under duress and protest.”
She snorted. “And what on God’s green earth makes you think I’m any different?”
“Are you?” He raised an eyebrow. For him that was the equivalent of full facial acrobatics.
“No!” She stomped over to face him, clutching Grafton’s first edition of A Tale of Two Cities hard enough to crack the binding. She tried not to notice when the toe of her left ballet flat touched the leather tip of Angel’s black tactical boot. Feet were not erogenous zones, were they? At least not fully clad feet? “I either work for him and do what he says, or he’ll see me in jail.”
Something sparked in Angel’s eyes. Some sort of emotion. But damned if she could figure out which one it was.
“What does he have on you?” The guy did his best impression of a nightclub bouncer. All hulking shoulders and crossed arms and an I-like-to-kick-asses-so-don’t-mess-with-me grimace.
She was startled by his question. Angel never offered up anything about himself—and certainly never expressed enough interest in anyone else to actually pose a personal question. Maybe her momentary shock was why she found herself spilling her guts.
“Before Lord Grafton, I used to work for Interpol. There was a man…a good man who got caught up in a bad situation. I helped him elude capture.”
