“You can’t time me. I have actual work to do,” she hollered after me.
“Three hours,” I said and whistled my way down the stairs as she slammed her door in response. There was a grin on my face that hadn’t been there in much longer than a year. Maybe never. Maybe since I was thirteen.
♫ ♫ ♫
Exactly three hours later, I walked up the veranda steps from my check-in with the security system in the basement and opened the French doors off the library. She was sitting at Carson’s desk in my T-shirt, but she’d partnered it with a pair of leggings she hadn’t given me to wash. She was barefoot, one foot curled up under her on the desk chair, the other tapping away to something she was listening to in her earbuds.
I slid up behind her and kissed her on the top of the head.
“Holy shit,” she said, jumping a mile and banging my lip into my teeth hard enough to draw blood.
She turned, hand to her heart, and watched as I stuck my finger on my lip.
“Well, damn, you were the first one to draw blood,” I teased.
She put her finger on my lip as well. “I’m so sorry, but Jesus, you need to stop scaring me like that.”
I held her finger, kissing it.
“Self-defense rule number one: always be prepared for the sneak attack.”
She rolled her eyes, and I looked back to the book she had open on her computer screen. I smirked. “That doesn’t look like work.”
“Well, someone gave me a time limit, so I hurried through everything and finished early. If I get fired for doing a sloppy job, it’s on you.”
“You’re never sloppy,” I said. She shrugged away the compliment.
I pulled the computer closer to read the title, and she tried to swipe it away before I got a look at it, which only increased my curiosity. I pulled it over her head and laughed upon seeing the words.
“Why are you reading this?”
“Research,” she said, one hand on her hip, the other stuck out for the laptop.
“About snipers?”
She nodded. “You know. Get-to-know-your-enemy kind of thing.”
“Now I’m the enemy?”
I took a step toward her, and she moved away from the desk. “Well, for the purpose of this activity you are.”
“And you think you can figure me out from a book?” She was still backing away, but I was a hunter. I’d been a hunter long before I’d become a sniper, but the two skills had merged, and I knew exactly how to give chase.
“You’d be surprised,” she said and then turned and ran.
I dropped the computer onto the desk and pursued her. She darted up the stairs, and I followed while images of me racing another woman filled my head. Images of my mother, with her long dark hair streaming behind her just like Dani’s. One thing was sure, there would be no doubt about who won this race. Dani was giving it her best shot, but I was stronger and faster. I caught her around the middle before she even reached the top step.
She kicked and threw her arms around wildly, and I held her until she stopped, and then I turned her and kissed her until my heart—that was normally even during any kind of chase—was beating a wild pace that matched hers. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement and quickly placed myself between Dani and the unknown. When I looked up, it was just Maribelle with a huge smile on her face.
“Just like The Bodyguard.” She tsked as she started down the stairs with a smile. Dani, who was still behind me, put her forehead against my back, and I could feel her laughter all the way through my muscles until it settled on my bones. I couldn’t help the grin that appeared.
Maribelle looked up at us when she reached the bottom.
“Don’t mind me. I’m just going to do some baking. Please feel free to proceed with whatever it was you intended to do.”
“We’re going to use the gym. I’m teaching her self-defense,” I said, trying to control the laughter threatening to escape my chest.
“Hmm. Is that what they call it these days?” Maribelle said as she made her way toward the kitchen.
I couldn’t hold it back. The laughter came out in a loud roar, echoing around the high ceilings, dancing along the mosaic of light streaming in the stained-glass windows. It felt odd, not because I hadn’t laughed in a long time, but because the laughter hadn’t been this light, this whole, this free in decades. Maybe since the last time I’d run up these same steps, chasing another dark-haired woman with love swinging between us.
I was going to teach Dani self-defense, but I wasn’t sure I knew the moves to protect myself from falling. From falling in love, or from falling with heartache. I didn’t know how to keep us together without pulling us apart. I wasn’t sure Dani did either.
Dani
BOUND TO YOU
“I found a man I can trust.
And boy, I believe in us.
I am terrified to love for the first time.”
Performed by Christina Aguilera
Written by Aguilera / Dixon / Furler
My body was delightfully sore from a night spent in Nash’s bed and a morning spent in his shower. I was tender in places no one had ever made me tender before. His careful, purposeful touch had been worth surrendering to even when I could see the danger in doing so. The real danger to my heart and soul had whipped back into my brain with the names of women appearing on his lips. Especially Tristan’s, because even though they weren’t twined together romantically, their lives were still twisted together, and I didn’t know what room that left for me.
I did know it was too late for me to save myself from being hurt. He’d taken a piece of me just like he’d taken my clothes. With a sweet demand.
