Second finger up, and I let the third one hang there a second before finishing with a flourish—
"And thirdly, hers."
The look on his handsome face is priceless.
"But by that I really mean'mine', just in case I'm not being clear enough."
I say this with a laugh because obviously, I'm (half) joking, but hey, if he wants to be mine, who am I to say no?
When we're done with dinner, I ask if he can walk me home, and while he only grunts in response, low and put-upon, he also falls into step beside me like the hottest bodyguard ever, so that's a yes in my book.
He doesn't talk much as we walk. He doesn't have to. Without being asked, he takes the street side, one whole head above the crowd, and every man who looks at me twice abruptly discovers urgent business in the opposite direction. Being this close to him, with my shoulder accidentally brushing against his arm, and his fingers cupping my elbow when I almost trip at one point—
It's all terribly exciting, and it really is terrible unfortunately, for someone like me whose borrowed heart comes from a stranger I'll never get to thank.
My building is loud with other people's dinners, and since I've never been the type to keep things nice and orderly inside my bag, it takes a while to find my key.
"I'm so sorry..."
I turn around to face him after unlocking my door, and I'm looking at him, hoping, waiting, and holding my breath—
Please, please, please.
I'm sure he knows what I'm waiting for—
"Don't make a habit of being stupid." It comes out rougher than anything else he's said all night, like the words snagged on something on the way out. "No job is worth getting killed." But that's all Mr. H says before walking away.
MAXIMO GOT TWO BLOCKSbefore he let himself stop.
What the hell had just happened?
He'd come back to Los Angeles for one reason, and it hadn't been this.
The plan had been simple. Fly in, drive, park across a street he'd memorized from a file he wasn't supposed to have. Watch her come out of whatever late shift she was working. Confirm with his own eyes that this girl was walking, and breathing, and alive.
Jassy Beale.
The girl he knew he should stay away from, but instead he had succumbed to the desire to see how she was doing.
And that was all he truly wanted, the only thing he had flown six thousand miles for.
He simply wanted to see how she was. Who she was. And then leave, and never let her know a man named Maximo existed.
But then he saw her about to get mugged, and that was it.
The rest of his plan no longer applied.
Because the girl who wasn't supposed to know he existed?
Jassy hadn't hesitated to let him know she found him hot, honorable, andhers.
Worse, she had somehow gotten her way in treating him to dinner, and equally confounding was why Maximo had let her get away with giving him a name like what she said was true.
That she washis.
When that could never be...and not just because of how Jassy reminded him of a nineteen-year-old girl whose eyes sparkled just like hers, sometimes out of mischief, other times out of joy. He could never belong to Jassy, and their paths should never have crossed like this.
Jassy was the one girl in this world he was forbidden to want because beating behind her chest...was his sister's heart.
