I nod. The fuses look fine. Nothing obviously out of sorts with any of the power panels or other equipment. “I’ll make a few calls, have someone come out and do athorough system inspection, just to be safe.”
I feel her watching me as I carefully squat to take a closer look at the tangle of cables and other wires feeding into the boutique’s internet, power, and security systems. The position is made ten times more uncomfortable for the strain it puts on my prosthesis, but it is the weight of Evelyn’s studying gaze that makes me eager to wrap up and put some distance between us.
“Who’s got access to the equipment in here?”
“You mean, besides the random service techs from the cable and power companies?” She shrugs. “Everyone in the shop, I guess. Me, Katrina, Megan, a handful of sales clerks who work the floor on weekdays. Occasionally, our seamstress, Jane, comes into the boutique. Baine International also sends a nighttime cleaning crew twice a week. Why?”
“Just curious.” I stand up and turn to face her. “Probably a good idea to put a panel combo lock on this door too. I’ll add it to my list when I talk with Nick and Beck in the morning.”
“Okay.”
“Nothing more to be done here tonight,” I tell her, turning off the light to the electrical room as I exit and close the door behind me. “Come on. If you’re ready to go, I’ll walk out with you.”
Evelyn’s purse and a leather tote packed with papers and her laptop sit near the back door where she left them when I first came in. She picks them up and we walk out together, she pausing to lock the deadbolts while I wait.
Her high-heeled sandals click on the dark pavement of the small parking lot. I keep my head on a swivel, surreptitiously checking our surroundings as we move toward her car, one of my hands hovering near herelbow, my other loose at my side, but ready to react at the first sign of trouble.
As we approach her Volvo, she clicks the locks open with her key fob. I wait a couple of steps away, still searching the gloom and shadows as she opens the back passenger door and places her tote behind the driver’s seat.
“How many years did you spend in Afghanistan?”
Her question catches me off-guard. Though not nearly as much as the realization of how close we’re standing to each other in the dark. The vanilla scent of her hair drifts on the night breeze, the heat of her skin radiating in the minuscule space that separates her body from mine. I’m shocked by the amount of control it takes for me to keep my hands at my sides, when all I want to do is reach up and smooth the dark tendril of hair off her cheek as she talks.
Even more than that, I am seized by the urge to tilt her chin and lower my mouth to hers.
I curb all those inappropriate impulses, but only barely.
“I deployed to Kandahar right out of basic,” I tell her, my voice sounding rusty and unused. I’m not used to talking about my military career, let alone talking about it with a beautiful former supermodel at the tail end of a long day and a night that’s doomed to end a lot sooner—and far less naked—than I would prefer. “I completed a couple of combat tours. Would’ve had a third under my belt, but an IED blew me home two months into it.”
I hear her quiet inhalation, see the look of surprise on her face. So, she doesn’t know the gory details afterall. I don’t know if I’m relieved or disappointed that she assumes I’m whole. All I do know is that her opinion shouldn’t matter to me. Shouldn’t, yet does.
“An IED.” She swallows, her gaze steady and, thankfully, devoid of pity or fascination. “Andrew told me you came home with a Purple Heart.”
I acknowledge with a shrug because that medal—and all the other commendations that came with it—don’t mean shit to me. Each one represents a failure. To myself, my country, and, most of all, the soldiers under my command. My friends who came home in flag-draped boxes.
She reaches out, and before I realize it, her fingers light gently on my cheek. The flesh that’s stretched over the metal plates serving as my cheekbone often seems a bit numb, but not now. I feel everything in that brief, tender touch.
I move out of it before I am tempted to crave any more. If there had been exterior cameras to watch us now, I never would have let that breach happen in the first place.
Or so I assure myself.
“I’ll write up my proposal for new security measures when I get home,” I tell her, acting as if my heart isn’t throbbing like a drum in my chest, and my arousal hasn’t just spiked off the charts.
It takes everything I have to resist the urge to reach for her. She nods in response to what I’m saying, playing along with my effort to pretend there’s nothing happening between us.
Because there isn’t. There can’t be. Not when it will mean jeopardizing my job and the trust her brother and Dominic Baine have placed in me.
But damn. It’s not easy holding on to my resolve when the heat of her fingertips still lingers on my cheek. Or when the promise of her kiss simmers in her wide, expressive eyes.
I clear my throat. “In addition to motion sensor video monitoring and beefed up exterior lighting, I’m also going to recommend new locks on all doors inside and out, as well as video monitoring for all areas inside the shop.”
“You really think that’s going to be necessary?” She folds her arms over her breasts and sighs. “I’ve been working here for three years without any issues.”
“And I plan to make sure that trend continues.”
A smile lifts the edge of her mouth. “Now you’re starting to sound like my brother.”
Christ. Far from it.I take a healthy step back. “I’ll be in touch tomorrow. Goodnight, Evelyn.”
