Page 15 of Mortal Heart

“Hello there, darlings.” The hostess, a pretty redhead in an emerald green bustier and panty set, checked their IDs. Her gaze swept over both Arkady and Ronan with equal amounts of appreciation. “Welcome to Bella’s. I’m Bunny.”

Arkady didn’t seem to mind how the hostess’s gaze lingered on her curves. “Hello, Bunny,” she replied, her tone playful. “Iloveyour outfit. That green looks amazing on you.”

“Thank you.” Bunny’s smile revealed cute dimples. “Where would you lovelies like to sit? Main stage area or VIP lounge?”

“Main stage area.” Ronan put his arm around Arkady’s waist and rested his hand lightly on her hip. They had to play their roles, but she hadn’t explicitly told him how much touching she’d allow. For all his teasing, he wasn’t one to grab first and ask forgiveness later, and that went double for women as well-armed as Arkady.

“If we see someone in the audience we like, we can invite them to join us in the lounge for a private dance?” he asked.

“Of course. We want everyone to enjoy themselves.” Bunny led them to a table with plush chairs and a good view of the stage. Ronan pulled out Arkady’s chair for her, then sat in his own. “Cleo will be right with you,” Bunny added. “Cherry and Coco are up next on the main stage. Have fun, darlings.” With a wink, she headed back to the hostess desk.

As soon as Bunny left, Arkady got up and sat sideways in Ronan’s lap. She crossed her legs toward him so she was almost curled up against his chest, and nuzzled his neck. To an observer, they would seem like nothing more than an overly demonstrative couple, but Ronan sensed Arkady was all business now. She could talk to him in an undertone without anyone being able to overhear.

“You see him?” she murmured. Her breath felt warm against his skin. She smelled of mint and tequila. “Second table from the right, next to the main stage.”

“Yes.” Ronan had spotted Ace—real name Oliver Mora—the moment they’d entered the club.

When he’d first seen Mora’s photo, courtesy of a contact he’d made not long after he’d left Alice’s house, Ronan had thought Mora an unlikely candidate to be part of a trafficking organization. His appearance seemed average in almost every way. He looked fit but not overly so. In a nondescript blue button-down shirt and khakis, he would blend into any crowd and not attract much attention. Ronan supposed he could be considered moderately handsome in the right light, but again, not in a memorable way.

After several hundred years of operating as a bounty hunter, however, Ronan knew never to judge a target by their appearance. He’d earned a couple of scars while learning that lesson. Often the most uninteresting-looking people proved to be the most dangerous.

When their server, Cleo, came by, they ordered top-shelf tequila for both of them, with a twist of lemon for Arkady. Ronan recalled that at the Pelican, Arkady had purchased a bottle of the same brand he’d been drinking. Coincidence? He suspected it wasn’t. She’d wanted him to notice her, or she would have ensured he didn’t. He had a couple of theories as to why that would be the case, and he found each possible explanation more intriguing than the last.

Once Cleo left their table, Arkady went back to murmuring into his ear about their target. “Looks about as bland as unseasoned mashed potatoes until you look at his eyes,” she said. “He’s got shark eyes.”

Ronan had noticed Mora’s eyes too. Even in the photo his contact sent via text, the eyes were what stood out while the rest of the man looked entirely uninteresting. Both in the photo and in real life, they were hard, dark, and very cold.

Shark eyes, Arkady had said. Not a bad way to describe them.

Ronan nuzzled her hair and pretended it was just for show, and that he didn’t enjoy the feeling of her body so close to his.

As if she’d sensed how he felt, she smiled. Not her predator smile or the thousand-watt grin she’d unleashed on the bouncer, but the rare genuine smile he’d grown to really like. “What’s your gut feeling about him?” she asked.

Mora sipped his bourbon and watched the performers onstage. He smiled appreciatively as Cherry and Coco twirled and danced and shimmied out of their costumes, but his smile struck Ronan as entirely superficial. His odd detachment stood out even more when Ronan compared it to the body language of everyone else in the audience. He came across less as an enthusiastic patron of the club than a man here on business. And unless Ronan was very much mistaken, women were the business in question. The way Mora looked at the dancers reminded him of a merchant evaluating goods for sale rather than a man here for entertainment purposes.

“I think we’ve got the right Ace,” he said quietly. And since he felt sure Arkady would understand he meant it as an assessment of Mora’s character, he added, “I don’t like him.”

“Me either. He looks like he has cold hands.” She chuckled softly. “Maybe I should makeyouseduce him into accepting an invitation to the VIP lounge. I don’t really want him to touch me.”

“I don’t really want him to touch you either. Because you don’t want him to,” he amended. “Not because I think it’s up to me who touches you.”

She leaned back to get a good look at his face. “If anyone else said that, I’d think they were full of shit and just trying to impress me. Why is it I believe you, when Iknowhow full of shit you are?”

He gave her his own real smile. As far as he could recall, the only other person who’d ever seen it was Alice. “Because you can’t resist my easygoing charm and good manners?”

She laughed.What an amazing sound that is, he thought. “No, I think it’s because when you’re bullshitting me, you don’t try to hide it,” she mused. “You’re shockingly honest, especially given your chosen profession and the whole outlaw vibe you’ve got going on.”

“I might say the same of you.”

She laughed again, this time more caustically. “Well, there goes my assessment of you as a good judge of character. I’m incredibly dishonest, Ronan. In fact, the more honest I seem to be, the more full of shit I am.”

She seemed convincing in her claims of dishonesty, but he felt sure it was an attempt to make him think things he’d noticed about her earlier weren’t true.

“Iama good judge of character, and my bullshit detector is very finely tuned,” he said, his lips close to her ear. “So don’t bother trying to bluff me, Miss Woodall.”

Her smile turned predatory again. “If it makes you happy to think you’ve figured me out, go ahead and think it, sweet pea. I don’t mind. It just means you’ll never see it coming.”

Ronan wondered what it was he’d supposedly never see coming.

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