She disappeared into the bathroom. When she emerged in an oversized T-shirt and crawled into bed, I claimed the couch and the silence that came with it.
I ran through everything. Walsh—motive and resources, but she thought he was too calculated. The socialite with the gambling ring—unlikely but not cleared. The ex—sad, not dangerous, but someone I needed to look at harder. Kiser—deprioritized per the source.
The watcher outside Velvet Arrow nagged at me. The threat level had felt low, almost amateur—wrong body language for a professional tail. But who was it? And why tonight?
Hours later, I was still awake. The apartment settled around me—old pipes groaning, refrigerator humming, Charlie shifting once in her sleep and going still again.
This assignment was supposed to be straightforward. Keep her alive. Maintain distance. Do the job.
But nothing about Charlotte Collins was straightforward. And every hour I spent in her orbit made the distance harder to hold.
Six more days. I just had to keep my hands to myself for six more days.
I was already losing that fight.
Chapter Three
Charlie
The brunette wig was wrong.
I held it up to my face in the bathroom mirror, checking the color against my skin tone in the early light. Too warm. I'd read as Mediterranean, and tonight's cover was old-money WASP. I needed cooler tones. The auburn was sharper, but a blunt-cut redhead stood out in a crowd — the opposite of what I wanted. Back to the brunette. Maybe with different makeup I could cool it down.
Behind me, reflected in the mirror, Dominic Knight was still asleep on my couch.
He'd kicked off the blanket sometime during the night. His T-shirt had ridden up, exposing a strip of tanned stomach and abs that made a girl forget she had principles. One arm was thrown over his head, dark hair rumpled, that permanent five o'clock shadow even darker in the early light.
I'd been up since six. Given up on sleep at six-fifteen. Spent the time pulling disguise options and telling myself I wasn't glancing through the open bathroom door every thirty seconds.
I was absolutely glancing through the open bathroom door every thirty seconds.
Sleep-rumpled Dominic was somehow worse than alert, intimidating Dominic. Alert Dominic, I could fight. This version made me want to do things that would definitely violate his precious safety protocols.
I yanked open the coffee cabinet harder than necessary. The bang echoed through the apartment.
His eyes opened. Not gradually — just open, instantly awake, scanning the room before landing on me. Two mornings in a row now. I still wasn't used to how fast he went from unconscious to operational.
"You always wake up like a light switch?" I asked, pouring coffee. "It's unsettling."
"You always announce morning by assaulting your kitchen cabinets?"
"Only when I have roommates I didn't ask for."
He sat up, rolled his shoulders — muscles doing things under that T-shirt that I refused to notice — and reached for the coffee I'd grudgingly left within his reach. "Day three. You haven't fired me yet."
