Then someone grabbed him from behind. He grunted, wheezed and landed on the sidewalk like a rag doll. Something cracked, like a rib or a vertebrae, and his gun hit the ground and slid away. Whoever had saved me put a foot into his back, shoving his face into the gravel until a pool of blood appeared. He didn’t make a sound after that.
“Don’t you fucking move,” growled the owner of the foot.
My breath whooshed from my lungs. I knew that voice. But what was he doing here? With one hand he kept his own gun pointed at the stranger’s back. With the other he put his cell phone to his ear and called the police. Then my knight in shining armor looked over at me and winked.
Rafe.
I couldn’t say anything for a minute. I couldn’t even breathe. Sirens wailed in the distance, then grew closer and closer until finally a police car came screaming up our street and two officers jumped out.
“How did you – ” I managed to squeak out.
But my question was lost in the arrest of the man on the ground, who’d apparently overstayed his work visa and was about to be deported to the Ukraine. Rafe said something I couldn’t hear as the cops handcuffed the man. His biceps flexed in his familiar black T-shirt, and a strange but not unwelcome warmth seeped into me.
You saved me.
This guy I’d practically hated at the start, who’d disrupted my dates and my plans and my nights out, had turned out to be the one guy I couldn’t live without.
“Miss?” said one of the cops. “Could we get your statement?”
I nodded, then started to shake. From head to toe, so hard I thought I was having convulsions or going into shock. I couldn’t tell them what had happened, because I was going to either throw up or pass out.
Then he was there. Rafe slipped one arm around my waist and kept me from falling. “Are you okay?”
I tried to answer but my lips trembled like a baby’s, so he took me into his arms and I burst into tears. Like an inconsolable child, I leaned into his chest and wept. Loud, ugly, without caring how I looked or sounded, I took a good five minutes to let go. My fingers clutched his shirt, my face ended up pillowed in his perfectly sculpted pecs, and all I could do was cry.
To his credit, he didn’t say a thing. He just stood there and held me. He didn’t caress me or say everything would be okay. He just let me weep. I’d never been so glad he was a man of few words as in that moment.
Finally I straightened and wiped my face. I’d left the front of his shirt a soggy mess, with a suspicious-looking smear that was probably a combination of mascara and snot. “Ick. I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Rafe swiped his hand over his shirt, then patted my back and squeezed my fingers in his. And then, after a long, lovely moment of hesitation, linked them through mine. Five on five. Strong. Solid to the core. Stars shot through me, and I knew this was the start of something amazing.
“It’s been a long morning, babe. Let’s get you and that damn cat back inside.”
15
“So who was he?”Remy leaned over her cocktail in a corner booth of Tunes & ’Tudes. Charlie sat beside her, equally intent, though I had a feeling his attention had less to do with my near-death encounter and more with the fact that he was pressed up against Remy’s left boob.
“Some sort of spy.” I shrugged, like it was no big deal, even though I’d almost passed out when I learned all the details.
Charlie whistled. Remy shook her head. “That’s intense. And insane.”
“Why was he at the art gallery?” Charlie asked. “How did he know Angela?”
Angela.I twirled my wine glass.Poor thing, she really wasn’t a good judge of character. “They met at some kind of political function, I guess.”
“Have you told her yet?”
I shook my head. I’d texted her and suggested she stop by for happy hour, which didn’t give me much time to get my story straight. Make thatstories, plural. I still wasn’t sure which to reveal first, the fact that her snuggle buddy from the gallery was a hired gun, or the fact that her lover was about to become a father for the third time with his devoted wife. Either way she’d need a boatload of booze to process it all.
“Are you sure this job is worth it?” Remy asked.
I took a minute to think. Mistress dispelling sure hadn’t turned out the way I thought it would, but my life wasn’t ordinary anymore. I was an undercover agent, a cool cat, a member of a secret society whose mission was to root out the immoral and give love a lasting chance.
Plus the payout from a single job was enough to make my bank account sit up and take notice.
PlusI’d met one hell of an amazing guy in the process.
“Yeah,” I said as my phone lit up with a text from Rafe. “I’m pretty sure it’s worth it.”
