His gaze swung from me to Ringo.“I’ll bet.”
Ringo held up a hand.“Hey, that’s not fair.”
“You wanna clarify that, buddy?”
Oh God… Buddy.Cop-speak for perpetrator, without technically being incorrect.
Ringo smiled.“We met in the airport on Valentine’s Day.”
That was a good day.It started awful, and turned into one of the most romantic, unromantic overseas flights I could have ever imagined.Ringo needed a last-minute ticket to Italy, and I was trying to cash one in.Fate.Dumb luck?
Or maybe forced opportunity.In hindsight, I’m certain Ringo could have arranged his own flight just fine, but used my predicament to weasel his way into my good graces.
And yet, spending seventeen hours on flights and in airports with a man pretending to be a perfect gentleman wasn’t all bad.
“You bought me chocolates in Denver.”
And coffee in Venice.
“Sounds cliche.”Trust Casey to ruin my little fantasy.“And then you show up at the bar last night.”
“She mentioned where she worked, so I thought I’d check it out while I was in town.”
“And now you’re here.”Casey stared at his shirtless abs.There was a scar running up one side.I knew the lie about that one.Supposedly, Ringo got it while helping Mario’s uncle on the farm.
But goats don’t carry knives that can cut a man’s side open like that.
A familiar little tingle pricked at my cheeks and my thighs trembled from locking my knees in place.I didn’t even have to see the blood to know that line of scarring almost killed him.And that thought had me searching for a chair, because any second now, I was going down.
“Well?”
Ringo was staring at me, not answering Casey.“Are you okay?”
“Head rush from getting up too early.”
His scrutiny was a little too suspicious.But he let it go.
Casey, however, didn’t.“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I protested.
“She was going to faint.”
“I was not.”
Casey interrupted our argument.“Youknowabout her fainting spells?When did she see blood?”
Christ on a cracker.Casey was too overprotective.
“Venice.A carnival play.She thought it was real.”
It wasn’t a play.It was the real damn thing.Someone chased me into an alley and had me at knifepoint.They were trying to get me to join them in some van somewhere for candy and possibly a cocktail.And when I woke, I’d be in Budapest or Dubai, or perhaps even Manilla without the promised books.Then Ringo swept in, took their knife right out of their kung-fu grip and sliced their throat open.
I fainted before I kissed the ground.
Luckily, I woke up in a five-diamond suite, with my nose against a really nice chest that smelled kind of sweet and kind of spicy.Just like this morning.Unlike today, we weren’t interrupted.
“Ellie?”
