"I remember."
"From ten years ago?"
"I remember everything about you, Betty." I cracked an egg into a bowl, keeping my eyes on my task. It was easier than looking at her right now. Easier than seeing the confusion and suspicion warring in her expression. "Every damn thing."
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "That's creepy, Hudson." She hesitated. "What else do you remember?"
I cracked another egg. Added some cheese. Started whisking.
"I remember you hate mornings. That you're not fully human until you've had at least two cups of coffee. That you sing in the shower when you think no one's listening, badly, I might add, and that you always burn toast no matter how carefully you watch it."
"I do not."
"You do." I glanced at her over my shoulder and caught the ghost of a smile on her lips before she could hide it. "You get distracted and forget about it, and then the smoke alarm goes off and you curse like a sailor while you're fanning the smoke out the window."
"That happenedone time."
"It happened at least a dozen times when we lived together."
She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. "Fine. Maybe more than once. But that doesn't mean." She stopped, shaking her head. "We're not doing this."
"Doing what?"
"This." She waved her hand between us. "The reminiscing. The remember-when. We're not going to stand here and pretend the last ten years didn't happen."
"I'm not pretending anything." I poured the eggs into a heated pan, watching them sizzle. "I'm just making you breakfast."
"While remembering my coffee order and my toast-burning habits."
"Is there a rule against that too?"
She glared at me, and even pissed off, she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Her hair was still wild from sleep, her face bare of makeup, her curves soft under that thin tank top. I wanted to cross the kitchen, pin her against the counter, and kiss her until neither of us could breathe.
Instead, I scrambled the eggs.
"There should be," she muttered, turning back to the coffee maker.
We ate breakfast at her tiny kitchen table, sitting across from each other in a silence that was somehow both awkward and familiar. She ate more than I'd expected and I tried not to feel smug about it.
"So what's the plan?" she asked, setting down her fork. "You said you're here to protect me. What does that actually look like?"
"My team is coming in today to upgrade your security. New locks, cameras, motion sensors. Same at the bar." I pushed my empty plate aside. "I'll be with you whenever you leave this apartment. If I can't be there for some reason, one of my guys will be."
"Your guys?"
"My team. Black Hawk Protection. Best in the business."
She studied me for a moment, her expression unreadable. "You really did build an empire, didn't you?"
"I built a company. The empire part was an accident."
"Right." She didn't sound convinced. "And you're just going to... what? Follow me around twenty-four seven? Don't you have a business to run? Important clients to protect?"
"I have people for that." I met her eyes, holding her gaze. "Right now, there's only one client that matters."
"I'm not a client, Hudson. I didn't hire you."
"No. You're not a client." I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the table. "You're more important than any client I've everhad. And I'm not leaving until those two cops are behind bars and you're safe."
