Some Like It Deadly (18 page)

“Promise, I’ll be good.”
Gooooo.
But she swallowed back the snarl. Her mother hadn’t stopped talking since she’d arrived and she’d been a nervous wreck.

Closing her eyes the moment the door closed, Kate sighed.

They’d told her Richard was fine, but she hadn’t heard from or seen him. Yes, it made sense they’d lock him down for a few days to make sure that Braun acted alone. But she didn’t get the feeling from the man that he was part of any larger conspiracy. It didn’t matter that they’d loaded her up on painkillers, or that it was her lung that had been compromised and not her heart.

Because her heart hurt.

Opening her eyes, she stared up at the ceiling and then reached for the leads connecting her to the machines. If they had Richard on lockdown then she just needed to go to him. It was over—and she could tell him the truth dammit. Peterson said Braun was behind the accident and the first shooting.

Her job was done.

* * *

She made it to Richard’s house, but he wasn’t there. The guard at the gate recognized her, and without complaint, he’d helped her into the house. She’d been grateful—it had taken every scrap of energy she had to stay upright on the drive. Without a doubt, the guard would report in to Peterson and whomever, but it didn’t matter.

Richard mattered.

Exhausted, she sank down onto the sofa and leaned her head back. Maybe leaving the hospital early hadn’t been the best idea—though it proved surprisingly easy. What little energy she’d mustered evaporated before she slipped into a taxi. Bless the driver, he didn’t bat an eyelash at her odd clothing.

Who knew, maybe pajama bottoms and a hospital gown would be all the rage in the next season.

The door opened and Kate could barely keep back a groan. “I asked for a few minutes,” she told the guard, not willing to move yet. “I can go back to the hospital later.”

“Kate.” At the sound of his voice, her eyes jerked open.

“Richard.” He was there. He looked like hell—his eyes were bloodshot, his hair disheveled, and his shirt wasn’t tucked in—and she’d never seen a more beautiful sight. “You are
okay.
” Relief swamped her.

“Yes.” His presence seemed to fill the room, but there was a distance in his eyes and a hard tilt to his mouth. “You weren’t at the hospital.”

“Neither were you.” But her attempt at levity fell flat and her relief dissolved into a pool of unease. “You know.”

“Peterson had to authorize your medical care,” he murmured. “I figured it out and Armand confirmed.”

Her heart squeezed at the distrust in his dark eyes. “I’m sorry.” She had no excuse to offer, no pretty words to make it better. They’d given her a job to do and she’d lied to him to make it happen. “I lied to you.”

“Yes, you did.” A muscle in his jaw flexed. “And you saved my life—twice.”

How did she answer that? “I screwed up at the center. I shouldn’t have let you distract me when I opened that door. I shouldn’t have opened it without clearing the porch first. Basic rules and I—I was thinking about getting naked.” Bitter was the taste of her failure.

“But you’d quit.” He moved forward, his steps slow and his gaze intent. “That’s what Peterson said.”

The churning in her stomach increased. “I did. I still knew better, especially after you sent the security detail away.”

“You were upset on the driveway.” He said it as if that made sense to him now, and perhaps it did.

“An unsecure location? Strangers? Poor lighting? Yeah, I was upset. But instead of saying it, I had to keep playing my part.” Tears burned in her eyes. Stupidity was crime in her book. “I’d never have forgiven myself if you’d been hurt.”

“What part were you playing, Kate?” Danger lurked in that question, but he had every right to ask it.

“Girlfriend. Lover. But it wasn’t a role, it was what I’d become.” Her chest hurt with every breath, but she tried to take a deeper one. She needed to get the words out and refused to shy away from the choice she’d made. “It’s why I had to quit. I hated lying to you.”

“But you kept lying.” The accusation stung.

She could argue that she’d made the decision before she really knew him—that it somehow mitigated it. “I had orders, and a contract and...all of that aside, I didn’t want you to hate me.”

“Ripping the Band-Aid off?” Her Richard appeared in the shadows of the cool man assessing her.

“Without mercy. I
liked
you. I really
liked
you. I never lied about my feelings. But it was so damn complicated. You were supposed to be a protectee, one I had to be undercover to protect because you didn’t want visible security.” She blew out a breath and tried to stand, because she hated feeling so weak in this discussion. But she’d barely made the attempt before Richard was across the room and stopping her with a hand on her arm.

“What are you doing?” There was nothing distant or cool in his growl.

“Trying to stand... To walk to you.” Though his presence made her action a moot point.

“No, you stay there. Scared the hell out of me when I found out you’d slipped out of the hospital. At least until the man on the gate called Peterson and I to let us know you were here.” He squeezed her arm gently, his fingers a light brush against her skin, but he pulled away before she could capture the contact then sat down on the coffee table in front of her. Blinking furiously, she catalogued his appearance. He really did look like hell.

“You didn’t want visible security. They briefed me on your aversion to it and the fact that you slipped a detail before. The job as your assistant was perfect. I’d be with you for a huge portion of the day, I could assess your internal security in the office, coax the building into increasing it, and provide the rest of the detail with the data on your schedule so they could maintain surveillance at a distance. It—it created an illusion that would make you comfortable and safe at the same time.”

“Yeah, it’s the illusion part I’m having a problem with.” The stilted words were like shards of glass being driven into her chest.

“The job—as your assistant, that was an illusion that I enjoyed. I did do the work. You and me? That was...” How could she describe it? God, she’d wanted to be the one to tell him. Finding out the way he did and then... “You weren’t under lockdown, were you?”

His lashes dipped once and his gaze slid away from hers. “No. I was drunk.”

“Ripping the Band-Aid off?” She threw his words back at him.

“No, drowning the Band-Aid. I was angry and terrified. You bled so damn much and I wanted to strangle you for trying to save me.”

“Well,
you
told him to shoot you.” Her anger surfaced. “You never tell a nutjob to shoot you, they just might do it.”

“I didn’t want him to shoot
you.
” The words gritted out between his teeth were a fierce snarl and the distance in his eyes vanished to be replaced by fury. “He had a gun to your head, Kate. He had a gun to your head and my heart stopped. All I could think about was making sure you got out of it alive.”

She knew damn well where the gun had been pointed. “Without you it wouldn’t have mattered,” she whispered.

“Why?” He leaned toward her, their faces inches apart. “Why was it so damn important to do your job when you’d quit? Or was that an illusion too?”

“No, you jackass, I quit because I was falling for you and I couldn’t be rational or reasonable about your security. I had to save you because I love you.” She hit him, but the blow didn’t move him. Not when she barely had any force behind it. “I love you.”

He stilled, his gaze searching hers. “I want to believe you.”

“Believe me or not, a man can be convinced of anything only if he wants to be convinced.” She closed her eyes, but it was too late, a tear slipped out. “The scariest moment in my life happened when I saw him swing that gun at you. I knew I had seconds to act. Even hitting the panic button, they would never get there in time.”

“So you stepped into the bullet.”

“I’d do it again.” His face wavered through her tears. “I’d do it in a heartbeat. I don’t want to be in a world that doesn’t have you in it. I wasn’t lying when I said I’d never met anyone like you before. You—blow my mind. You’re so damn smart and so incredibly dedicated and you make me crazy. I loved every moment we spent together and I love
you
, Richard Prentiss. Call me a fool, call me a liar, call me anything you want. But I love you.”

He cupped her face and brushed away one of her tears with his thumb. The utter gentleness in the action took her breath away. “I let you in, deeper than I have ever let anyone.”

“I know.” Her heart sank. Trust was a huge issue for him and she’d violated it. She’d violated it before she’d ever loved him. “If I could go back...”

“You’d change it?” He continued to stroke her cheek with his thumb, the hard line of his mouth softening. “But if you changed it, I wouldn’t have met you.”

“I could have told you the truth, that day in your office.” It was bravado. Peterson would never have given her the job if she couldn’t maintain the confidentiality.

“I would have thrown you out on your sweet ass.” His lips curved in a hint of a smile.

A flash of humor raced through her. “You could have tried. You forget, I’m damn tough.”

“No, I haven’t forgotten at all.” His tone gentled. “You keep proving your strength to me over and over. If you’d told me the truth then, I wouldn’t have gotten to know this wildly capable woman with her ability to manage me so finely tuned she does it while recuperating from multiple gunshot wounds.”

“His Highness brought you your prescriptions.” Another weight lifted off her shoulders. He was so bad about remembering them.

“Okay, before we go any further—Again, His Highness is named Armand. He called you a sister today, so you can call him by his name to his face. Or jackass, or pain in the ass, or son of a bitch—I highly recommend all of those. But no more formality with him.”

Surprise flickered through her at his fierceness. “Richard...”

“No, I’m not done. You had your turn, now it’s mine. You can’t bodyguard anyone anymore. No more stepping into bullets, no more wonder woman. I know you can and I think you’re brilliant because you do it so fearlessly, but my heart can’t take it. So I need you to tell me you’ve retired from that.”

Laughing through a fresh wave of tears, she winced. “Okay, don’t make me laugh that hurts.”

“Yeah, you still haven’t said you’re retiring.”

“I don’t really think it’s going to be a problem after I ditched Peterson at the hospital.” The security chief had been on hand every day since she’d been admitted and she’d gone out of her way to avoid him in the hospital.

Concern mixed with curiosity filled his tired eyes. “How did you get out of there?”

“You don’t seriously think you’re the only one who knows how to avoid a security team, do you?” Taking a shallow breath, she shifted on the sofa and sat forward. Not having the pressure on her back or her chest helped. Richard watched her like a hawk, but when he would have spoken, she pressed two fingers to his lips. “I’m not a big fan of the undercover bodyguard job and to be honest, I took this work because I have a pretty specific skillset. I like protecting people.”

Brushing her fingers with a kiss, he caught her hand in his. “I can learn to adapt, just not a fan of you being shot.”

“Well that makes two of us and it occurred to me the other night...before I got shot, that what you do for those women? At the shelter? You’re amazing. That’s why you have all those clothes upstairs.”

A singular nod. “Sometimes they need a swift escape and can’t take anything with them. Some need to be relocated to other states or be somewhere they’re sure no one will find them. I can bring them here, they can come and go via the back and they
feel
safer and it helps them to make the decisions that are right for them.”

He really was one of the white hats. “You do realize that if you’d told Peterson and your security team, we might have looked to the ex-husbands and abusers for a potential threat against you.” Keeping it a secret may have protected his clients, but it had left him unguarded.

For a long moment, consternation arrested Richard’s expression. She expected him to argue, but instead he sighed and gave a slow nod. “You’re right. I didn’t want guards because it threw me back to my childhood—to the FBI watching us and digging through my life. I
really
didn’t think anyone was after
me.
”

And because she adored him, she threaded her fingers with his. “That man wasn’t really after you, so in that you were right. You’re one of the good guys—the real deal. You take a risk with yourself and not for any reward but to help others. You’re amazing man, Richard.” He was too. He’d let himself bleed, take any hit for another, but for some reason he didn’t think others should do it for him.

“It was about my father.” With a sigh, he slid a hand up to cup her nape and leaned his forehead to hers. “I am so sorry that he was the reason you were shot.”

“No, I was shot because I wanted to save your life, because yours means more to me than my own.” She told him honestly. “Don’t let the actions of a man made mad by grief, and mental illness, color any of this. Yeah, maybe your father screwed his family, but Arthur Braun’s actions were his own.”

“Except...” Of course he wanted to argue it.

“No,” she shook her head and the gentle friction where their foreheads brushed offered comfort and connection. “No.
You
did nothing wrong, except keep some key details from your security team.
I
did nothing wrong except let myself get distracted from my training. At the end of the day, Braun chose to come at you with a weapon, to make you pay for those slights against him, real or imagined and he’s in custody, you’re safe and I’m—”

“Hurt.”

“But I’ll recover and I thought you said my scars were sexy.” Her tease had the desired effect, the hard line of his mouth softened into a smile. Then she sobered. “What about your father, though? What will you do?”

Richard shrugged. “To me—the big man I loved and admired died when I was a kid, and it disrupted my whole world. The man who took his place? The selfish jerk who trashed so many lives? That’s not my father.”