Unfortunately, he knew the answer. It was possessiveness. The caveman kind where he wanted to throw her over his shoulder, cart her off to his lair, and then guard her from any comers who might think to cut even so much as a look her way.
Which sounded nice to the moon-eyed girls who went gah-gah over the heroes in those teeny-bopper books about sparkling vampires and bare-chested werewolves. But anyone with an ounce of intelligence knew possessiveness was about as far fromniceas a person could get.
Possession was about ownership. Love was about freedom.
Sadly, Fisher didn’t know how to love. He had a hard, cold stone where his heart should have been. He’d inherited the damn thing from his father right along with the prickly legged monster.
“You know the security here is top-notch.” Eliza’s words dragged him from his unwelcome thoughts. “And what could be safer for me than being surrounded by a bunch of black ops soldiers? Besides,” she finished with a sticky-sounding swallow, “the danger to me is over. The shooter is dead.”
Thephysicaldanger might have passed. But Fisher knew emotional danger still loomed.
She was in shock. As soon as it dissipated, she was going to crash and crashhard.
His eyes tracked once again to the ring on her finger, a ring he couldn’t have afforded even on his best day. He didn’t envy her the coming hours and days when the realityof her situation set in. When it finally hit her,trulyhit her that the man she loved was dead.
When the prickly legged beast snarled, venom dripping from its fangs, he mentally squashed it with his boot and forced himself to take stock of his surroundings.
He’d peeked into her room dozens of times over the years. But he’d been careful never to step foot inside. For one thing, living and working with folks meant there was very little privacy to be had. And what privacy any of themcouldfind was held sacrosanct. For another thing, when he was inside her room he couldn’t escape her smell.
Her perfume lingered. That clean, crisp scent that always made him think of spring and the promise of something beautiful after a storm. And anytime he smelled it he wanted. He yearned. He wished for things that could never be and that just made him…well…sad.
Her bed was black metal. The blanket thrown over it was one of those cream, fluffy things that was basically a big pillowcase. And the painting hanging above her headboard was a blurry, nighttime cityscape—Chicago as seen through a rain-soaked windowpane.
The chair pushed into the corner was large and plush and blush colored. It matched some of the threads in the thick rug on the floor. There was one of those standing, full-length mirrors beside her dresser that reflected the two of them on the bed.
He looked large and hard and menacing.
She looked feminine and soft and…broken.
He wanted so badly to pull her back into his embrace. In fact, now that he knew what it was to hold her, to feel her heart beat in time with his own and appreciate how perfectly her head fit into the crook of his shoulder, he wondered how he’d ever lived his lifewithoutholding her.
And there it is again. That toxic need to conquer and claim.
To distract himself from his shortcomings, he let his gaze swing around her room one more time. He clocked how the pattern on the curtains matched the fabric covering the little pillow tossed into the armchair. How the jewelry stand on her dresser held only a few delicate pieces even though he knew she could probably afford to buy out half of Tiffany’s. How the large wax candle in the glass hurricane holder on the occasional table by the door was half-melted and scented the air with the faintest tinge of vanilla.
Her room was sophisticated and inviting, just like the woman herself. A warm little sanctuary inside the cold, industrial expanse of the old menthol cigarette factory. And a far cry from the sparce furnishings and threadbare quilt that filled his own room.
If he’d ever needed more proof of their differences, all he had to do was compare the small squares of space they’d carved out for themselves there at BKI.
Where she was soft and refined, he was hard and coarse. Where she was tasteful and stylish, he was boorish and uncivilized. But, most importantly, where she was used to the finer things in life, he’d gotten used to making do with the bare necessities.
The society girl and the boy from the wrong side of the tracks indeed.
“Dad, please.” Her tone had grown exasperated, and he was sorely tempted to rip the phone from her hand and tell her father to fuck off. The last thing she needed was to get on a plane and fly halfway across the country. “I’m exhausted. My head is killing me. All I want is sleep.”
He watched as a line appeared between her eyebrows. Then she shook her head. “No. Idon’tknow why Senator McClean invited me over tonight. I mean, I guess I assumed he was just giving Charlie a chance to rub elbows with some D.C. dealmakers. You know Charlie was always looking for support when it came to funding his charities.”
Ah, yes. Charles McClean, the ultimate do-gooder.
The prickly legged thing blinked open an eye but Fisher shoved an imaginary finger over its eyelid and told it to go back to sleep.
“Yes.” Eliza nodded. “I got a chance to talk to the senator. Just for a few minutes before he was called away by a colleague. But, Dad? Why does any of this matter? It’s not like you can solve the case from the Oval Office. Let the FBI agents do their job. And letmeget some sleep. I’ll call you in the morning when I can think straight and then you can ask me anything you want, okay? I promise I’ll be better at answering questions then.”
He didn’t hear what Meadows said next. He wondered if the man said anything at all, because Eliza sighed deeply and then simply thumbed off her phone.
“He’s worried about ya,” he assured her.
Leonard Meadows was a hard man, aharriedman, always in a rush. But Fisher didn’t doubt the guy loved his daughter. He’d seen it in the old codger’s eyes the one and only time the chief of staff had made a clandestine trip to BKI with Madam President to check out the men they’d hired to do their dirty work.
