Emory returned her cards and tended to his hand—an ace high, but nothing more. He dropped his chips to the table and sipped his drink to bury a smile. Amelia’s brows knit as she studied her cards. She searched Emory’s face and chewed her bottom lip. Sweet thing had the easiest tells. She won on luck of a good deal, not a knack for deception.
“Your move,” he deadpanned.
Amelia discarded two cards, and Emory dealt two more. She sifted through her harlequin pile of chips and bid three blue. Emory raised two reds, but Amelia’s resolve collapsed as she methis impassive stare and folded with a three of a kind. Emory tossed down a shitty hand.
“You tricked me!”
She feigned affront, but merry laughter rang through the room. His bluffs enthralled her almost as much as winning.
“I did.” Emory cleared away his chips. “My apologies.”
As he shuffled the deck, silence washed over Amelia. She spun a white chip against the table and fidgeted in her seat.
“Emory.”
He’d never get over his name on her lips. Even now, it sent shivers down his spine.
“Amelia.”
“You know that motel clerk, the one Damon hurt?” she asked and held onto fresh cards like a lifeline.
“Mm-hm.”
“Is he okay?”
Emory anted up with a white chip. “He’s still in the hospital, I think.”
Amelia shook her head and rearranged the cards in her hand with vacant interest. The order didn’t matter, only the distraction.
“That’s awful.” A dissonant pause hung in the air like ending a song off tune. “He was very young; probably just out of high school. He didn’t deserve what happened to him.”
She couldn’t bluff to save her life. Emory set his cards aside and folded his arms on the table.
“Sweetheart, what is it you need from me?”
His casual affection seemingly set her at ease, and Amelia released a shaky breath. Though the cards crushed in her small hands, she matched his eyes with wolfish determination.
“I want him to be okay.”
At another table negotiating terms, Emory’s worlds collided. He saw the bravery it took to ask, and it both dazzled and disturbed that some part of her still feared him.
“I understand, and I love that you’ve got such a big heart, butthere are risks if he makes it too. I can’t rob from the reaper and expect him to call it even, you know?”
Amelia frowned. “I know.”
The divide between Moriarty men and women had its function. It wasn’t a chauvinistic holdover from Joseph’s time as chief, but a practicality meant to guard against that particular quandary. Amelia’s compassion was worth protecting, though, so Emory did what all Moriarty men swore they never would.
“Is that what you want?” he asked as if they were shopping for some glitzy bauble or zippy convertible to make her happy. He sensed it would cost him far more.
A radiant smile unfolded on Amelia’s lips. Every part of her exuded warm romance as sweet and tender as basking in the afternoon sun. With a face like that—so angelic and with a heart of glimmering gold to match—he’d be hard pressed to deny her anything, and thus Emory backed himself into a dangerous corner.
He took her hand and lightly kissed the top. “I have a feeling he’ll pull through.”
By early evening,the afternoon haze thickened, and overcast clouds blotted out an already sinking sun. They hung dark and low and crackled with heat lightning.
As a simple man with simple desires, it stood to reason that spaghetti was among Emory’s favorite meals. As a street soldier, he would drag his exhausted carcass through the door of the apartment he shared with Jack, Pete, and Corey and throw together slop called dinner—noodles and tomato sauce. It’d been a small comfort when he’d known so few.
And because Amelia blessed him with boundless affection, she cooked his favorite meal and even secured an accomplice, Pete, who’d bought the missing ingredients for her that morning.
