“You?” Her world tilted again on its axis. The sense of betrayal was instant. “You’re myboss?”
“I know how you must feel. I—”
“No you don’t.”
“I think I do. I’ve slept with you. I know things about you. I didn’t tell you last night because my concern was about what had happened to you. And you had a lot to process, and I didn’t want you to—”
“And now you’re my keeper? Deciding what’s good for me to hear?”
Loss of control, submission in sex was one thing, but ... this. This was something else. She swallowed. Pressure was building in her ears. Claustrophobia circling.Focus. Stay in control.She started to get up, couldn’t sit in this little cubicle, in this little bobble of a yacht ... panic was rising.
“Fitz also asked me to spy on you.”
It hit her like a sledgehammer.“What?”
Silence.
“You’re in fucking bed withFitz?”
“Would I have just told you this if I were in bed with him?”
She glowered at him. The old familiar anger, the spiciness of rage, began to swell inside her, pushing aside her fears, and she welcomed it. “Spy? Because of what happened with Hash?”
He nodded. “And because he’s a misogynistic little prick with a Napoleon complex.”
“So now I’ve done this to you, too—sharpened the conflict of interest. Put you in a situation where you’ve been asked to assess my mental fitness for the job, while you already know that I mentally cracked—almost killed you. Did you tell himthat?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know what to think anymore, Maddocks. I’ve put you in this position, and now I’m sitting here at your mercy. Fucking body, heart, soul ...” She stopped at the sound of her own words.
Heart.
Soul.
Her eyes burned. She swallowed. He’d gone stone still. His eyes glistened, too.
It was out there now. Like a vibrating thing in the space between them—this thing they were beginning to feel for each other. The heavy implications. The shimmering possibilities. The challenges.
A sort of quiet tide of terror rose up inside her, swallowing away any teases of rage, leaving behind something far more complex.
“I have your back, Angie,” he whispered. “You need to know that.”
“It’ll cost you, Maddocks.” She looked away, fiddled with the knife next to her untouched plate of food. She turned the piece of silver cutlery over, and over, and over. She should just walk away. For his sake. Quit or something. This wasn’t fair on him. But she also didn’t want to step away from a fight. Angie did not like to lose. Ever. Conflict twisted, tore, warred inside her. Yesterday she’d glimpsed a way forward. Shewantedthat way forward, but the world wasn’t suddenly going to make it easy for her now, was it? She looked back at him. Met those eyes.
She wanted him, too.
She couldn’t walk away from him. As much as she should walk away from him.
“And I’m not alone,” he said quietly.
“Meaning?”
“Holgersen, too.”
“Heknows?”
“Not about the incident outside the church. But he saw us, outside the Pig.”
