Page 51 of Rafael

No way. She couldn’t hide in his apartment when he might be injured.

She had run back down the stairs and crossed the alley when a figure emerged from the back of her building.

A stab of fear ripped through her, and a scream rose in her throat.

The figure emerged into the starlight.

Gisele clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her scream and staggered forward into Rafael’s arms.

He wrapped his arms around her and held her close, his handgun bumping against her back. “I told you to go back into my apartment,” he said with his lips pressed to the top of her head. He turned her toward the stairs. “Come on. Let’s get you backinside.” He pressed his empty hand to the small of her back and guided her back to his building and up the stairs.

“What about Johnny?” Gisele asked as they reached the door to his apartment. She turned to go back down, but his hand blocked her.

“He’s fine,” Rafael said. “I checked in on him. The intruder didn’t get past the door. The alarm scared him off. It did its job.”

Gisele let Rafael usher her through the door.

Once inside, she stood, looking around, her brow furrowed, at a loss for what to do now.

Rafael made a 911 call and reported the attempted break-in. A deputy would investigate.

“They probably won’t find anything,” Rafael said as he ended the call.

“Why is this happening?” Gisele looked up into Rafael’s eyes. “My shop isn’t anything special. I don’t keep a lot of cash lying around. I don’t understand.”

Rafael pulled her into his arms and held her. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I know one thing for certain.”

Gisele laid her cheek against his chest, listening to the reassuring beat of his heart. “What do you know?”

“You’re not staying over there. Not until we figure out who the hell is trying to get in and why.”

As much as she wanted to argue with the man, she couldn’t.

As fiercely independent as she liked to think she was, she wasn’t stupid. She couldn’t deal with the situation by herself. Having someone with combat and self-defense skills would come in handy and maybe keep her alive.

When she’d left his apartment a few minutes earlier, she’d been running scared—not of Rafael, but of her growing feelings for the man.

She’d nearly lost her shit when he’d disappeared going after the intruder.

In that moment, she’d realized what she was afraid to admit. The reason she’d left his apartment. The one thing that would surely put an earlier end to whatever was happening between her and Rafael.

She’d realized that though she might be able to live with the man...

She couldn’t live without him.

In the few hours she’d spent with Rafael, she’d fallen under his spell, succumbed to his charm and landed head over heels for the cheeky bastard.

CHAPTER 11

It took some convincing,but Rafael finally got Gisele back in his bed.

Not to make love but to try to sleep when sleep was the furthest thing from their minds.

Someone wanted inside the Mamba Wamba gift shop. Two attempts had been made, and the sheriff’s department didn’t have a single clue that would lead them to the culprit.

Rafael lay awake well into the early hours of the morning, holding Gisele as she slept fitfully. In his mind, he’d gone through every possible suspect he could think of, which didn’t even amount to a handful of people. Who would target the gift shop and why? And if it wasn’t the gift shop, who would target Gisele? She was one of the kindest, most giving people he knew.

Was her connection with the bayou’s Voodoo queen enough of a reason to terrorize her?

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