Page 8 of Holding Out For A Holiday Hero

She stared into his eyes. Such a deep, compelling gaze.

Such a handsome, dangerous man.

Strong cheekbones. Sharp nose. High forehead. Lips that were sinful. A jaw made of granite. A six-foot-three powerhouse of strength. He’d been impressive as a kid, but with a few laugh lines on his face and with muscles packing his body, Jake Hale was absolutely drop-dead gorgeous now.

“You hired me to protect you, True.” He kept holding her hand. Warmth spiraled through her body. “That’s exactly what I’ll do. You never need to be afraid of me.”

“I hired you to find out who is after me.” She hadn’t hired him to protect her. He was just…doing that.

“Same thing.”

Was it?

He let go of her hand. He lifted his glass. “To keeping you safe and stopping the bastard out there.”

“I can drink to that.” She tapped his glass with her own.

Then she gulped down the wine as fast as she could.

“Who would want to hurt you?”

Hours had passed. Hours when True had actually felt safe and…dare she say it? Happy. Because being with Jake was actually surprisingly easy. He’d prepared what had to be the best steaks in the world. He’d chatted. He’d joked. He’d been…charming. And her guard had lowered. She’d found herself smiling and the tension that had ridden her for days had slowly vanished.

So now she was curled up on his couch, minus her boots and his jacket, with her feet tucked beneath her, and a half-empty wine glass gripped in her hand. She’d been staring into the tempting darkness of his eyes and maybe wondering a bit too much about what his mouth might feel like against hers when the dark rumble of his question had emerged.

Who would want to hurt you? She’d asked herself the same thing so many times lately. And the answer was always the same. “I-I don’t know.”

“No enemies? No exes who just didn’t want to let go?” He didn’t hold a wine glass. One arm was stretched along the back of the couch. The other rested near his side. His watchful gaze never left her face.

She put down her glass. “I’m divorced, but my ex is hardly the kind of man who would try to kill me.”

“You sure about that? Sometimes, you think you know someone…” His words trailed away. She could have sworn his gaze heated. Then he finished, “And you discover you never really knew the person at all.”

“Richard is a prosecutor in Atlanta. He puts criminals away. He isn’t one.” Though there were plenty of sins that he did choose to commit, killing wasn’t one of them.

“You sure about that?”

“We divorced. He didn’t—didn’t put some kind of hit on me!”

“Why did you divorce?”

She blinked. “Irreconcilable differences.”

He just waited.

“He wanted to fuck his legal secretary, and I had a problem with that. An irreconcilable problem.” Her mouth dropped open after the stark confession. Oh, wow. She had not meant to share one of the most humiliating moments of her life. I found them together when I took him dinner because Richard was working a late-night shift on a big case. They were kissing on his desk. She’d dropped the food. Chinese. It had spilled all across the floor as she’d stared at him and felt every single one of her dreams crash around her. And it had hurt extra hard because…

No, do not go there. Don’t think about it right now.

“He was married to you.” Jake cocked his head to the right. “And he wanted to fuck someone else?”

Pain burned through her.

“What a fucking idiot.” A pause. “Want me to go beat the hell out of him?”

A shocked laugh sputtered out of her. “No!”

“The offer will always be on the table.” He leaned toward her. His hand reached out and curled under her chin. “He hurt you. I can hurt him back. You say the word.”

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