Her Secret Life

“From what I heard from the guy I talked with at the local precinct, those classes are what kept you from further harm before help arrived. You’d managed to incapacitate one and might have smashed the other guy in the face.”

“I was hoping I’d be able to break his nose,” she said. “And that a teenager would show up at a local hospital or urgent care with injuries.”

No one had shown up anywhere. And he knew that made her recovery that much harder.

His time was running out. Twenty minutes. Max.

He hadn’t opened the box she’d brought. Couldn’t eat a bagel right then since he’d be eating an early lunch. If they were bagels. The box was different. Bore no markings.

And she’d come to him for a very different kind of discussion.

Because he’d promised her one.

CHAPTER THIRTY

SHE WASN’T GOING to ask him. For once in her life, she wasn’t going to push. She wasn’t going to lose Michael, no matter what it took to keep him in her life.

Because he belonged there. She knew that was a surety as solid as the one that told her she and Lacey would always find a way to be close. Michael touched her like Lacey did. Soul deep.

“I promised you a discussion.” Michael looked far too manly in that dark suit. Did he realize red ties screamed have sex with me? Or maybe it was just her...and his red tie...

She so badly wanted to tell him that her sexual feelings for him had definitely not dissipated since Wednesday night. They’d escalated to the point of filling her dreams with fantasies she’d never even entertained before.

Bo had called again the night before. She wanted to tell Michael about that, too, but it was all kind of connected to the sex situation, and she was not going to push.

“You still want to talk?”

She was not going to push. She was not going to push. She was not going to push.

She nodded. Trying for nonchalant. Which was why her feet were still up on his desk even though one of them was falling asleep. She was an actress. She knew which pose said what.

“Okay.” He clasped his hands, let them drop, still clasped, in front of him. The skin on his jaw tightened. She noticed it more on the scarred side. Probably because she liked that side better.

“Here’s what I’ve got...”

She was breathing. But it wasn’t an easy task.

“If we do this, and it’s still an if, we agree on boundaries—and I mean really agree, as in we both find them necessary—and we make certain that we do not cross them.”

She nodded. Bring them on, she thought. But she wasn’t pushing.

She also wasn’t the least bit nervous. She didn’t feel like crossing her arms over her chest as she’d done the entire time she’d been on the phone with Bo the night before.

Being with the women in her class, she felt like she wasn’t alone. Being with Michael was just plain good.

“So...what would you give us as boundaries?”

Wait. She’d planned to agree with whatever he needed. And abide by it. Implicitly.

Feet on the floor, she stood, too. Walked two steps to the back wall of the little room and then returned to place her hands on the back of her chair.

This was important. She had to focus. To think. To be aware.

“We’re best friends first,” she said, loving how that sounded. He’d been the first one to say it. She was still feeling the glow from hearing him refer to her as his best friend earlier. Ranking her right up there with his sisters.

“Agreed.”

“Now you. What would you give us as boundaries?”