Page 62 of My Vigilante Valentine

“You’re staring,” she murmured.

“I’m supposed to be. We’re dating, remember?”

Her lips curved, but then my phone buzzed with a text from Chris.

“Anything?” Luna asked, tilting forward as I read the message.

“Still working on it. Says he’s close, though.”

Chris had been working on leads he’d pulled from Marco’s burner phone, most of them duds. But he said there were a fewpromising avenues that he wanted to dig into, and he promised to keep us in the loop as he went.

Luna sat back with a small pout that shouldn’t have been so freaking…precious. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to suffer through this romantic dinner then.”

“Tragic.”

The waiter appeared to take our order, and I watched as Luna charmed him effortlessly, asking questions about the menu and making him laugh. It was what she always did—drew people in with that natural warmth of hers.

I’d watched it happen to countless fools at Wilde Brew, too. They thought they were ordering their coffee from your average, beautiful woman.

Then, before they knew it? They weredazzled.

There was no other word to describe it, and the worst part was… she’d done it to me, too.

And just like the rest of them, I hadn’t realized what was happening until it was too late.

“Jax,” she said once the waiter had left. “You’re doing it again.”

“If you’re about to say I’mbrooding?—”

She reached across the table and took my hand, her touch sending sparks through my entire body. “I don’t care what you call it. I’m just saying that you look deep in your head right now, and we’re supposed to be madly in love, remember?”

Right.

How could I forget?

I squeezed her hand gently, running my thumb over her knuckles. Her breath caught, and for a moment, everything else faded away. The restaurant, the other diners, even the man at the bar who was definitely watching us now—it all disappeared until it was just Luna and me.

“Better?” I asked, my voice rougher than intended.

She nodded, her cheeks flushed. “Much.”

We chatted a little more naturally until our food arrived. Luna dove into her pasta with unfiltered enthusiasm while I picked at my steak, too focused on our surroundings to really taste it.

“You know what I just realized?” she asked between bites.

“What’s that?”

“We don’t know much about each other. I mean, not really.”

I gave her a skeptical look. “You know some pretty major stuff about me. Stuff that nobody else knows. What else is there?”

“Really? Jax, you’re more than—” She stopped, glancing around and then leaning in, lowering her voice so only I could hear. “—yoursecret. Comic book references aside, you’re a full person. You’re not just some cardboard cutout of a superhero.”

The sip of whiskey I’d just taken went down the wrong pipe as her words sank in, and I coughed discreetly, working hard not to let it show.

Was she trying to make me fall in love with her for real? Maybe she figured if I did, our ruse would be more convincing.

She was strategic like that.

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