Page 44 of Vicious Temptation

“Remi, just give me a minute.”

She stops but doesn’t face me.

“I’m asking you to let me explain. That’s all.”

A few seconds pass before she finally turns around. Her eyes narrow as she looks me over, and despite her obvious fury, she’s still the most beautiful woman I’ve seen in a long fucking time.

“Okay, Braga. Explain why the hell you’re here. Out of all the gyms in this whole goddamn city, you just happen to end up in mine, the same way you slithered into my range.” She squares her shoulders. “So I ask you a second time. Are you stalking me? Because I promise that won’t end well for you.”

“Is that a threat?”

She closes the distance between us without a hint of hesitation. “It’s whatever the fuck you want it to be.”

I hold my ground, refusing to give her the satisfaction of backing away. “I didn’t see your name on the door.”

I wait for her comeback, but she says nothing, so I continue.

“What I do for a living doesn’t define me. My father was a detective…” I drag a hand over my jaw. “Look, I know plenty are assholes. It doesn’t mean I’m like that or whoever else made you hate cops enough to look at me like I’m the enemy.”

“What someone does means everything.”

There’s something in the way she says it that strips the argument right out of me. This isn’t about Grey, and I’m starting to think it isn’t entirely about me either.

I’ve read the files, but those pages reduce entire lives to names, operations, arrests, and body counts. They tell me what people have done without telling me what brought them there.

“Thiago,” she says, and some of the anger has faded from her voice. “I don’t want to see you again. I don’t want whatever you think this is or could have been. It can’t be, and it won’t ever.”

That shouldn’t bother me as much as it does.

I came here to get close to her. Whatever happened between us was supposed to make my job easier, nothing more. Except that in the last two weeks, I stopped thinking only about the job.

Remi takes two steps back, then turns away from me and walks toward her car. I stay where I am as her engine rumbles to life, and a few seconds later, she tears out of the parking lot.

Fuck.

“Looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you.” Elena’s voice startles the shit out of me.

I turn and find her sitting behind the wheel of a black SUV, a cigarette balanced between her fingers.

“How long have you been there?”

“Long enough to know you’re fucked,” she says casually, amusement threading through her voice.

“I told you I need time.”

“No, that’s not what I’m referring to.” She takes another drag from her cigarette. “And I think you know that.”

I stare at her. “I don’t follow.”

“Of course you don’t.” She taps the ash out of the open window. “She is beautiful, isn’t she?”

“I won’t deny the obvious, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be objective.”

A knowing smile touches Elena’s mouth. “Beautiful, dangerous, and completely uninterested in making this easy for you. I can see the appeal.”

“You’re reading too much into it.”

“Am I?” Her gaze shifts toward the street where Remi disappeared. “Because from where I’m sitting, you looked more concerned about her walking away than you did about losing access to the Cain family.”