Cain ( Underworld Mafia Romance 1)

I guess pajamas suit her better, though.

“I’m okay,” I tell her for the nth time as I step out of the bathroom.

Frankly, I’ve survived worse.

“I’m sorry,” Allie apologizes, also for the nth time.

I frown. “I already said you don’t have to apologize, Allie.”

“But I do,” she argues as she sits on the edge of the bed. “My brother punched you even though you did nothing to deserve it. I mean, all you did was help me get out of that office, and if you hadn’t done that, I would still be there. I would have gotten caught for sure.”

“You would have jumped out the window,” I tell her. “You’re braver than you think.”

Allie looks at me with arched eyebrows, making me realize that I’ve just paid her a compliment. Well, it’s true. She can be reckless and stubborn, but she can also be brave. She was brave to jump out of that window.

She looks away. “Still, you helped me. You offered to catch me so I wouldn’t hurt myself, and you did. And I know that couldn’t have been easy. I’m not that light.”

No. She isn’t. In fact, she was heavier than I expected, but I won’t tell her that.

“You’re welcome,” I say instead.

Allie gives me another look of surprise. Then her cheeks turn pink and she averts her gaze as she touches the nape of her neck.

“Stupid Grae. He should have given you an award, not punched you.”

My eyebrows go up. “An award?”

“A car, maybe. Or a house.”

My eyes grow wide. Must be nice to be a Chandler.

I lean against the wall. “Maybe he would have if he knew I saved you from a locked office.”

Allie snorts.

“But that’s not something you tell your brothers, is it?”

“No,” she admits.

“I bet they didn’t want you joining the FBI.”

She shrugs. “Well, it wasn’t their decision.”

“What did you do? Run away from home? Sign up without telling them?”

Allie grins. “I did consider that, but no. I talked to them. I gathered them in one room, had them sit down, and told them how much I wanted to join the FBI and why.”

“Why did you want to join the FBI?” I ask her curiously.

“Because I wanted to help make the world a little safer,” she answers without any thought.

A straightforward answer, one she’s given before, probably a few times, because I imagine that’s one of the first things people want to know about an FBI agent. I wonder when she first came up with that. When did she first feel unsafe? When did she start thinking she wanted to help others?

“What did your brothers say?” I ask instead.

“They argued with me at first, but eventually they understood.”

“Because they care about you.”

A fact, not a question. I saw how much Grae cared for Allie. I felt it in his punch. I bet her other two brothers feel the same way.

Allie looks at me. “Do you have a younger sister?”

“No,” I answer. “Why?”

She shrugs. “Nothing.”

But she’s thinking about something. I’d pry, but I feel like Allie has told me enough. I don’t like poking into other people’s heads almost as much as I don’t like them poking into mine.

“If I did, I wouldn’t have let her join the FBI either,” I simply tell her.

Allie chuckles. “I can see that.”

“I’m surprised your brothers haven’t bought the FBI just to make sure you don’t get into trouble.”

She frowns. “The FBI can’t be bought, silly.”

“Sure?”

Another frown. “And my brothers wouldn’t do something like that.”

“But they’d buy me a house or a car for rescuing you?” I ask.

No answer.

I walk across the room and sit in the armchair. “Maybe you should just tell them to buy you a house so you don’t have to stay in a hotel. Either that or buy this hotel so you can stay for free.”

“Right,” Allie says. “Or maybe they should just buy me a planet.”

The look on her face lets me know just how annoyed she is, so I keep quiet.

This is why I don’t talk to women. It’s so easy to say the wrong thing.

Thankfully, the sound of a ringing phone breaks the silence just before it gets too awkward. Allie grabs it from the bedside table and answers the call.

“What have you got?”

Not the usual phone greeting. It implies she’s talking to someone she knows well, someone she’s spoken to recently. Also, someone she’s asked to look into something. That’s how I answer the phone when I ask Andrea to find something out for me and he calls me back.

So Allie has a colleague she trusts? A friend? So much for working alone.

I watch her as she handles the call. She’s doing most of the listening, completely interested in what the person on the other end of the line has to say. She looks excited, even.

Then she grabs the pencil and notepad from the table and starts to scribble something. She repeats it back to the caller – an address – then she listens just a little more before saying a fervent “thank you” and hanging up.