Page 7 of Meet Me In The Dark

He should call it. The mission was heading in a direction he couldn’t foresee and therefore couldn’t control. Better to wash his hands of the whole thing, come up with some excuse for why he couldn’t keep watching her, and let Luke take over. Luke wouldn’t be able to walk two steps without tripping and falling into Kara’s unintentional trap, but fine, let him. Conor could marry her, for all Micah fucking cared. Conor and Luke could kick each other’s asses over the woman, for all Micah gave a shit at this point.

Liar, his brain sang. Micah lifted his glass to suck down his bourbon and hopefully drown out the taunting voice, only to realize his glass was empty. He raised his head, searching for the waitress, but as luck would have it, thewaitress was on the way over to him—and she was already carrying another glass of bourbon.

“This is great place,” Micah remarked when she reached him. “I was thinking I needed another drink and here you are, three steps ahead of me.” He didn’t mention that he hated when people were a few steps ahead of him—any steps ahead of him was a cause for alarm.

“Oh!” She grinned at him. “I’m not that good of a waitress; this is from the redhead at the bar.”

Micah’s stomach dropped to his feet, his vision blurring, a warning roaring in his brain and drowning out whatever else she was saying. He’d been tailing Kara for months, and this was unprecedented. She flirted all the time, but she never made the first move—especially not such an obvious one. Had he been made? What was he going to do if she knew he’d been tailing her?

“—read it so I can let her know if it’s a yes or a no,” the waitress was saying.

“Sorry, read what?”

As Micah’s vision cleared, he noticed that the waitress was holding out a paper napkin, folded into fourths like origami. Morbid curiosity moved him to take the napkin from her and smooth it flat.

The handwriting was full of loops and uncertainty. Something had been written and then crossed out, repeatedly—Micah couldn’t make out what it said, so he focused on what she’d replaced it with.

For the Tzedakkah you did earlier. Can I join you?

Micah swallowed, hand going to the Magen David hidden below his shirt. How had she seen it? Furthermore, how had she seen him, period? The night before, he’d left her safely ensconced in her sublet in the Marigny, asleep and alone. He’d made his way back to his hotel downtown,his thoughts churning with how hard it was becoming to walk away and how useless the whole mission had become, when he’d come across a homeless veteran and his dog on Delphine. The guy was clearly broken, had basically given up—just sitting on the street, head in his dirt-encrusted hands, not even bothering to ask passersby for money. His signHomeless Vet, Need Money to Feed Me and My Doghad fallen over, and the tragic wastefulness of the whole situation made Micah stop in his tracks. Reaching into his wallet, Micah pulled out a wad of fifties, probably a thousand dollars’ worth, tapped the guy on his shoulder and handed it over, along with the number for a national organization Luke liked that helped veterans get back on their feet, no questions, no judgment, no fine print. The guy had cried, he’d been so thankful, life coming back into those dead eyes, and Micah had mumbled a “don’t mention it” and gotten the hell out of there.

It was completely unplanned—Micah only carried that kind of cash because he hated the security nightmare of credit card accounts—a moment of vulnerability. It was okay, because he was the only one who was supposed to have known about it.

Was that what Kara was talking about? How had he missed her?

“…Sir? Should I tell her you’re not interested?” The waitress prompted. Micah ignored her, his gaze going straight to Kara, who watched him from the bar, her head tilted in question.

Watching him.Shewas watchinghim.Like she could see into him. Micah’s chest—and groin—heated and tightened.

He nodded at Kara, then jerked his head to the seat across from him. She swallowed, biting her lip, before hopping off her bar stool and murmuring something to thenow-disappointed bartender. Micah was almost amused at the sense of jealous satisfaction he got from knowing Kara had chosen him over the other man.

Because that was the thing, wasn’t it? This time, she hadn’t waited for someone else to make a move. She’d picked him out of all the fuckers at this restaurant and moved first. She’d chosen him. He didn’t knowwhy,but he was going to find out.

“I’m hoping this seat isn’t taken, or this is about to get really awkward,” Kara commented beside him, her soft, throaty voice smoothing over him like the rough side of velvet. It felt so good hearing her addresshimfor once, it practically hurt.

“I could say, ‘taken by you,’ but that would be cheesy,” Micah said, relieved that she couldn’t hear his heart pounding in his throat.

“We can’t have that.” Kara slid into the seat across from him and ran a hand over the back of her neck. Micah wasn’t sure if it was a nervous gesture or a come on; he’d seen her do a lot of things, but he’d never seen her do that before. He liked that he wasn’t sure, which was a real mindfuck for a guy who usually hated mysteries.

“I’m Micah.”

“Kara.”

There was a moment while they digested that information; or pretended to, on his side.

“So how’d you know I was Jewish?”

Kara sighed. “Right. I’m sorry, that was a real creepy stalker move, wasn’t it.”

Micah laughed. She had had no fucking idea.

“Stalking can be sexy, depending on the circumstances,” he said.

“Uh, as relieved as I am to hear that you aren’t going tofile a restraining order against me—you aren’t, right?—I’m going to have to disagree and say there’s literally nothing sexy about stalking.”

She delivered this with a straight face, and Micah would have believed her—except that he’d been hacking into her computer searches over the past few months, even the ones sent to her privacy filter, and he knew what kind of smut she liked to read.Stalker,kidnapping,nonconsensualhad all made appearances at various times. Micah wasn’t a dick or an idiot; he knew that just because a woman fantasized about dangerous meetings with men didn’t mean she actually wanted to have one. But even knowing it was a fantasy of hers…it brought up interesting fantasies for him, too, ones that made his cock thicken under the table.

He hid his thoughts from her, making sure to lower his voice for the next part.

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