“If you’re developing genuine feelings for your protectee?—”
“I like him, and I want to fuck him,” I said, deliberately crude. Maybe if I said it loud enough, I’d be able to drown out that quiet voice inside me that insisted this was so much more than that. “Who the fuck said anything about feelings?”
“You did when you told me you feel guilty.”
My heart squeezed tightly. “He’s nice, and I don’t like lying to him. That’s all.”
Another long silence. “You know why the rules exist. Why we don’t allow personal involvement. It compromises judgment, creates emotional conflicts, and makes it impossible to do the job effectively.”
“I’m doing the job. Charles is safe. I’m focused, I swear.”
“Focus on the job, Eamon. On keeping Charles safe. Is that understood?”
Charles was now at the checkout counter, chatting with the cashier and making her laugh. He had that effect on people—made them feel seen, valued, important. It was one of the thousand things that made me like him so much.
“Understood,” I said, the word scraping my throat raw.
“Good. Keep him safe, keep your distance, and this will all be over soon.”
The line went dead, leaving me standing in a parking lot in Lake Placid, watching the man I was falling for buy groceries and pretending my heart wasn’t breaking into a thousand pieces.
A few days. Maybe a week.
That was all the time I had left before I’d have to say goodbye to Charles Garrity forever, leaving him to wonder what had happened to the detective who’d sworn to protect him.
The man who’d never really existed at all.
NINETEEN
CHARLES
Snow had been falling steadily since we returned from Lake Placid, and by the time we finished dinner, at least six inches had accumulated outside. I watched through the kitchen window as fat flakes continued to drift down in the golden circle of light cast by the porch lamp, completely obscuring the tire tracks from our BMW.
“Looks like we’re officially snowed in,” I said, oddly comforted by the thought.
Eamon glanced up from where he was loading the dishwasher with our dinner plates. “Good. Means no one else will be coming up that mountain road tonight. Or tomorrow, most likely.”
The relief in his voice matched my own feelings. For the first time since this whole nightmare began, I felt truly safe. Carlo might be persistent, but he wasn’t stupid enough to attempt these winding mountain roads in a blizzard. We were completely cut off from the world, protected by nature itself.
“I should probably bring in more firewood before it gets too deep,” Eamon said, already reaching for his jacket.
“I’ll help?—”
“No need. You relax. I’ve got this.”
I settled in the living room with a glass of the wine I’d picked up in town—a nice red that had cost more than I usually spent but felt appropriate for our isolated evening. Through the window, I could see Eamon moving efficiently between the woodshed and the cabin, his arms full of split logs. Even in the swirling snow, he moved with purpose and confidence, like someone who’d done this exact task countless times before.
When he came back inside, stamping snow off his boots and shaking flakes from his dark hair, his cheeks were flushed with cold and exertion. He looked younger somehow, more carefree than I’d seen him since we’d met.
“That should keep us warm for days,” he said, hanging his jacket by the door. “Though I suspect this storm will blow over by tomorrow afternoon.”
“You sound pretty confident about that.”
He shrugged, accepting the glass of wine I offered him. “You learn to read weather patterns when you spend time in nature.”
Another piece of information that didn’t quite fit with his supposed background as a city detective. I filed it away with all the other small inconsistencies I’d been collecting, but I found I cared less about the contradictions than I probably should.
We settled on the couch together, closer than strictly necessary, watching the flames dance in the fireplace. The wine was making me bold, or maybe it was the intimacy of our situation—cut off from the world, safe in our own little bubble with nothing but the sound of wind and crackling logs.
