I moved my gaze from Jon to put my hands, which were still tangled in Keltan’s hair, to his chest. I appreciated his pecs for a split second in my flustered state, then pushed. Hard.
He frowned deeply at the motion, his eyes near black, and his pause had me slightly panicked that he wouldn’t move.
He did. Though he took me with him. His hands at my hips, he lifted me from the car, set me on the ground and pulled my dress down to its proper position, covering my panties in one smooth move.
After I found my bearings, both too soon and not soon enough, I frowned at my bag, which was lying on the ground. I snatched it up and brushed the dirt from it, then scuttled back towards Jon.
He wouldn’t offer much safety; in fact, he was more likely to push me back in the direction of the man he’d caught me almost having public sex with. But it was a risk I had to take.
He didn’t push me, though his paper-thin brow rose in question.
“You’re running from that?” he asked.
I scowled at him. Then I moved it to Keltan, whose arms were crossed once more, his jaw hard but eyes still liquid.
“You need to go back to whatever it was you were doing before you were lingering in my parking lot,” I informed him. “I have a life to live.”
He gave me a long look. “Yeah, Snow. So do I. One that does include lingering in your parking lot. And your apartment. And then finally settling where I belong—in your bed.”
On that promise, he turned on his heel and walked back to his truck.
Both Jon and I watched his journey. Or, more appropriately, the journey of his ass in those jeans.
I was processing the fact that he even said that, both unhesitatingly in front of Jon and at all, after six months of nothing. I was still processing it after the truck roared from the lot.
“Well,” Jon said finally, and I waited for it. The barrage of questions about the guy I’d told him nothing about but who was obviously more than nothing. I saw the cogs working in his mind. Jon was never one to bite his tongue. But apparently there was a first time for everything. “Wine?”
I glanced up at him. “Yeah. Wine. And witness protection.”
He linked his arm in mine. “Honey, I don’t even think Homeland Security will protect you from that. And I don’t know why you’d want it to.”
My heels clicked against the ground as we approached the gate that did, as Keltan said, require a code for entry. “Oh I want to. For simple things like breathing and sanity.”
He scoffed. “Who needs oxygen and lucidity when you’ve got a man who looks like that, kisses like that and has an accent to boot? And who is obviously in love with you?”
“Who indeed?”
“It’s six fucking thirty in the morning. On a Saturday. Whoever this is better have witness protection on speed dial,” a throaty and very pissed-off voice answered the phone.
“I may or may not have Googled their number on an unrelated matter, but I’m thinking you need me around for this,” I responded, sipping my second—third?—coffee of the morning. I had shared a bottle of red wine with Jon, told him the story halfway through said bottle, listened to him tell me to get my “undernourished and stylish-as-fuck ass over to that hottie’s house and fuck his brains out,” then went to sleep for approximately three hours before shaking awake to the box from the day before opening itself in my sleep. Not the Keltan one—that was still rattling dangerously—but the one where I saw a gaping neck wound, lifeless glassy eyes and a lot of blood.
Yeah, that one.
No sleep after that.
Only computers and a lot of research on the thoughts circling about the murder, the circumstances and pieces of the puzzle that didn’t quite fit in with the press’s assumptions. Of course, every station, national included, had picked up the story.
My story.
Roger had offered to impregnate me with his child and his “supreme genes” when that happened.
I politely refused and then agreed to not tell HR about that little nugget if he promised me a substantial bonus.
And more flexible hours. Which meant new shoes and brunch.
There was a rustling on the other end of the phone, muffled swearing and then the telltale sucking sound that no longer grossed me out. It was rather like white noise.
“I’m interested to hear the reasoning for this, Walker,” he grunted.
I told him the thoughts that had been brewing all night, Old Spice’s mention of a manifest the first. Then the public records I’d been able to search out on the deep web about debts that Lucinda had, despite turning over a tidy profit in the jewelry industry. About the extensive security detail, she had required leading up to her death.