Page 11 of Be Mine Forever

She looked up, blinking a few times when she realized he’d been staring. She raised both brows, quirking her wide, expressive mouth to one side.

“More lint?”

Touché.

Cam stared back for a moment. Jo had the steadiest eyes he’d ever seen. She’d been raised as the Walsh family princess and had grown into a queen. Her eyes held the kind of confidence most would never know or understand. But when Jo looked at him, Cam knew he was her loophole. He didn’t want to be. He hated that moment when her shield slipped and he could see that he was the one thing that could shake her. The one thing she’d be weak for.

She didn’t know what she was asking for. Angels don’t choose devils. Jo wanted people to think she was hard, but she was an angel. Ms. Kris had raised her with a heart that always looked out for others. He might have been avoiding her since Christmas, but he always knew what she was up to. She had made it her mission to continue and expand all the programs Ms. Kris had championed before she’d lost her battle with cancer. Jo was a tough-minded, tenderhearted angel who deserved better than the likes of him.

Eyes soft, bottom lip pulled between her teeth, she looked beyond his shoulder into the room he was blocking.

“You gonna let me in?” she asked.

Not if I can help it.

“Sure.” Cam grabbed her bag and rolled it into the suite, throwing an arm out to encompass the opulence-on-steroids suite. “Hercasa es su casa.”

Jo scanned the marble floor of the foyer beneath her feet; the Oriental rug, like a private island set on the gleaming hardwood floors in the living area; the fine art hanging on the walls. She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes, pointing to one of the first he’d painted in Paris, a gargoyle with diamond studs in his ears and a gold grill.

“Isn’t that one of yours?”

“Yeah, how’d you know?”

Jo gave him a long-suffering look. “I’d know your work a mile away.”

“It looks different in every form, though.” Cam considered the painting before looking back at Jo. “My graffiti stuff really looks nothing like anything else I do.”

“It’s not the style necessarily.” Jo walked over to the painting, running her fingers around the ebony frame, stark against the white wall. “It’s the oddity.”

“Oddity?”

“There is always something…not quite right, something off about everything you do.” Jo turned to him, a smile tugging at her full mouth, bare of lipstick and lush at the end of the day. “Even in the first picture you ever drew of me, I was wearing one polka-dot sock and one striped. It’s like you’re sneaking a middle finger at the world with every piece.”

Cam laughed because she was right. This girl knew him better than anyone else. Cam sobered, the laugh dying on his lips. But she didn’t know anything that really counted. If she did, she’d run in the other direction.

“You hungry?”

Jo opened and snapped her mouth closed. Yeah, he’d changed the subject. It felt too intimate, just the two of them. He needed to get Jo fed and to bed and out in the morning before he did something he’d regret. Jo looked between the painting and Cam one more time.

“Starving.”

“The suite actually has a kitchen, but would room service be okay tonight?”

“Of course, the quicker the better.”

Her words evoked an image of him pounding into Jo against the wall quicker and better and dirty with her go-on-forever legs wrapped around his back. He shot that image down and rolled her suitcase through the discreetly lit dining room toward the bedroom where she’d sleep. He allowed himself a quick head-to-toe before returning to Jo’s eyes, watching him watching her.

“Assuming you want to change.” He opened the door and pushed the luggage in. “Food shouldn’t take long. They have a great bison burger.”

“Sounds good. Hold the—”

“Onions.”

“Yeah, and extra—”

“Pickles.”

“And for cheese, I’d like—”

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