“I know.” The air around her was electric, and it made the hairs on my arm stand on end. Almost like the static hovering in the air before a storm broke.
“Flint’s pissed.” Understatement.
“He wants you contained.” Though I suspected I could have just stopped at the first three words. Both statements were true.
“And you?”
I met her gaze again. Held it.
“I want…” I let the two words hang there, deliberately before finishing, “clarity.”
She searched my face, pulse still racing, attraction and irritation tangled so tightly she hadn’t separated them yet.
“You’re dangerous,” she said, not unkindly.
“So are you,” I replied and the moment seemed to narrow to just the two of us. Her pupils expanded, her nostrils flared and her lips parted…
She really was quite lovely—and that was the problem.
The door handle turned.
Mallory didn’t look toward it, but she did react. I saw the shift before the sound registered—her shoulders firming, the adrenaline finding somewhere to brace. Whatever heat had been coiling between us didn’t vanish; it coalesced. Banked. Stored.
The door opened. Flint filled the opening like a villain in a horror flick. The slash of shadow seemingly more ominous because of the light behind him.
He took in the room in a single sweep: the closed door, the distance—or lack of it—between us, Mallory’s flushed face, the way neither of us moved to explain ourselves.
His eyes stopped on me. Then narrowed. “So this is where you went,” he said. His eyes flicked to the space between me and Mallory, then back to my face—measuring distance like it was evidence.
Mallory turned then, expression already reset into something cooler, sharper. “I needed a minute.”
Flint didn’t look at her when he replied. “You’ve had your minute.”
Calculation crossed his face—the quiet inventory of what he’d missed, what had happened without him, and who had been present for it. He didn’t like unanswered questions. He likedthem even less it seemed when they had my fingerprints on them.
“This wasn’t the plan,” he said—eyes on me, like I was the lever.
“There was no plan,” I replied evenly. “There was a window.”
His jaw tightened. “Youdon’t get to decide that.”
Mallory stepped forward half a pace. Not between us—she wasn’t playing referee—but close enough to signal ownership of the space. “Idecided it.”
Flint’s gaze snapped to her. Concern flashed first. Then irritation. Then something like fear, poorly disguised as control. “You went on air without clearance,” he said.
“I went on air to do my job. Report the news. Get the story,” she shot back, ticking off the items with her fingers.
Exhaling a slow and measured breath, Flint seemed to bring himself under firm control. “Did you think I wouldn’t have backed you?”
“I think,” she said, measured, “you would’ve slowed me down.”
His attention swung back to me, sharp now. “Where the hell were you? Shouldn’tyouhave been containing her? Instead you just, what—let it happen?”
I didn’t rise to it. Didn’t step forward. Didn’t retreat.
“Yes,” I said.
The silence that followed crackled—low, volatile. His jaw tensed and it wasn’t hard to imagine his teeth grinding. Flint’s jaw worked. His grip whitened around the phone. He shifted closer to Mallory like proximity could solve this. He was a man used to control, and he was being challenged on all fronts.
