“It’s okay, I’m having a great time.”
“How about some hot chocolate?” He grins, slow and wolfish.
“Hot chocolate sounds great.” I nod, already feeling the warmth spread through me.
Wait until he finds out there’s such a thing as frozen hot chocolate!
Warmed up from the cocoa, I’m perched on a bench while Rhys kneels to untie my skates. His big hands cradle my ankles, rubbing warmth back into my toes.
“God, that feels so good,” I sigh.
His eyes flick up through golden lashes, and something molten coils low in my belly. He opens his mouth to say something that doesn’t look like it will be PG, but his phone rings.
Groaning, he answers it. “Yeah, Blade. He is. All right. Thanks.” He tucks his phone back into his coat and swears.
“What?”
“I have to go…do something.”
My heart pounds, and I lean into his ear this time. “Kill someone?”
His face flicks back up to me, horror in his eyes. “You really don’t care that I kill people?”
I think about that. When I was eighteen, I got a harsh lesson in reality. I found out my father promised me to a man who also killed people. Then that man raped me.
I didn’t mean to fall for Rhys, and it’s only a happy coincidence that he is also a trained killer who can protect me if Kosta makes good on his threat to claim me.
There are no coincidences.Rhys was given to you for a reason.
I look up to see the face of the voice, but there’s nothing but fluffy clouds in the blue sky. My mother in heaven, maybe? An angel?
“Fallon, love. Come back to me. You drifted off. Do youreally not care?”
“Sorry.” I straighten, acting strong, because this is serious. “I don’t care. Well, I do care. Only because I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“No one is hurting me,” he says, and he lifts me up and helps me back into my boots. “Did you say something about a guy selling pretzels?”
Chapter 32
Rhys
Fallon left to check on a neighbor’s indoor tomato plant, and here I am in her flat, determined to find the journal she mentioned earlier. Figure out how this all bloody started.
The compact size of her place works in my favor. It’s not a house that will take hours to comb through every nook and cranny. Glancing around, I spot the nightstand littered with those pill bottles. Anger rolling through me, I halt when I see the top drawer.
I know from my experience as an investigator, women who write in journals usually do so at night. At bedtime. Keeping one in a nightstand makes sense.
But as a man, I know what else women keep in their nightstands. I’m not sure I can handle finding out if Fallon has a vibrator.
Groaning, I peek inside, and when there’s no waft of latex, I open the drawer further. And it’s filled with notebooks.
Shite
Lifting one, I pop it open and spot her chaotic handwriting. Yep, it’s a journal. Fuck, how do I go through all these? I flip through one after the other, wasting precious time to get out of here. I stop when I see my name.
I sit on the bed and read an entry from two years ago:
October 1st
