She said nothing.
“There was no client. There was no event-planning job. You were doing exactly what you did tonight, and I was too busy being charmed to see it.”
Something flickered across her face. He couldn’t tell if it was guilt or irritation that he’d put it together.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. But the edge in her voice had dulled. The denial was thinner this time.
“I saw your hand come out of a man’s jacket with his property in it. That’s not interpretation, Fallon.”
Her jaw flexed. The use of her name had landed somewhere she didn’t like. She was quiet for a few moments looking over his shoulder, and he could feel her recalibrating, deciding how much to give him, how much to fight.
Then her gaze dropped. Not to the floor. To his ear. To the earpiece.
The color left her face as she put it together. Not slowly, not gradually. It drained, and what replaced it wasn’t defiance or calculation. It was fear.
“You’re security.” Her voice had changed. Lower, tighter, stripped of every bit of the sharp banter she’d been throwing at him. “Professional security. That’s what you meant by work.”
He didn’t deny it.
Her hand on his lapel went rigid. She was running the math—what he’d seen, what he could prove, what kind of authority was behind that earpiece and how quickly it could come down on her.
“Fallon. Look at me.”
Her eyes came back to his. Wide. Guarded. Ready to bolt.
“I’m not a cop. I’m a private contractor, and petty theft is not in the scope of my contract. I’m here to protect a specific client from a specific threat, and you’re not it. As long as you’re not anywhere near my principal, what you do in this room is not my problem.”
She searched his face. He let her. Whatever she needed to see, he held still and let her find it.
She relaxed a fraction, no longer a half second from bolting. “You should’ve told me you worked security.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Maybe you should’ve told me you were a pickpocket.” He shook his head. “Zodiac Tactical has much bigger concerns than whatever it is you’re doing. So you’re off the hook, at least with me.”
They turned on the floor. The band played. Neither of them spoke for a few bars, and the silence was different now—less confrontation, more negotiation. Two people deciding what came next.
“So, security. What is it you protect people from?” she asked. “Poorly executed bumps at parties?”
“Threats. Real ones. The kind that come with documentation and law enforcement involvement.”
“Sounds dramatic.”
“Says the woman with someone else’s money clip in her pocket.”
Her mouth twitched. She fought it, but he caught it. “Allegedly.”
“I have very good eyes.”
“You have very selective eyes. You missed every red flag in Boston.”
The mention of Boston landed between them like a coin tossed on a table. Neither of them picked it up.
“Maybe I wasn’t looking for red flags,” he said.
“Maybe you should have been.”
“Probably.” He turned her, slow, and his thumb traced the curve of her hip without permission from the rest of his brain. “Would it have made a difference?”
“To what?”
