Page 103 of When He Protects

No, you just plan to deliver her to the highest bidder.“Seven million dollars can buy a whole lot of things, can’t it?”

Clay was driving again. “Yes. It can even buy a person a brand-new life.”

And, in the process, it could absolutely destroy someone else’s life. “Hey, Clay?”

“Yeah?”

“Hate to break this to you, but we’re not fucking friends anymore.”

A low laugh. “Figured that out…right when you pointed a gun at me.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Je t’aime.Tyler’s heart slowly stopped its fierce thundering. His eyes opened.

Just as Esme attempted to sneak from the bed.

Precious.

His arm flew out and curled around her. He tugged her back toward him. “Thought we agreed that the technique of seducing me into oblivion wasn’t going to work.”

Her hand trailed lightly across his chest. “Were you using the technique on me or was I using it on you? I’m a bit confused.”

“You just said you loved me.”

He felt the shiver that skated over her.

She blinked. “Plenty of people say things in the heat of the moment that they don’t mean.”

“You’re not plenty of people. You’re my Esme.”

“Tyler.” She pressed her lips together. Then, “I thought you didn’t speak French.”

“That why you said it in French? Because you didn’t think I’d understand your words?”

Her lashes swept down. “I said it in French because Iwas at my most basic, my most bare, in that instant. The words tumbled out.” She looked up at him. “They don’t have to mean anything.”

They meant everything. “Who was he protecting?”

“I don’t?—”

“Before our safe house was blown to pieces, you told me that you thought your father was good. That he’d been protecting someone. Only you never told me who he’d protected.” But Tyler had an idea.

She studied him. “You think because I say that I love you—you think now I’ll tell you every secret I have?”

He thought she trusted him, and he would never destroy her trust. It was too precious. “You just told me your biggest secret. I don’t think you say that you love people very often.” Quite the opposite. “I think you guard your heart at all costs. You didn’t even tell Louis, did you?”

“I didn’t love Louis.”

His eyes narrowed.

“He didn’t trust me, not completely, and I never trusted him. I never told him—” She broke off. “My mother.”

“What?”

“I never told Louis what he was trying to discover. He thought my father was this horrible master thief. That my father had been working in the business of darkness for years. But it wasn’t my father. It was my mother.” She rolled away from him and pulled the sheet with her. Esme stood beside the bed, and she wrapped the sheet around her body, toga-style. She looked sexy and beautiful with her hair disheveled, and he wanted nothing more than to pull her back against him.

But his job had been to uncover all her secrets.

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