Page 100 of Once a Killer

He nodded at the suitcases. “Still keeping one foot out the door, Bree?” His voice was cool. Guarded. She’d done that to him.

“No,” she said, swallowing the lump of tears in the back of her throat. “I… I didn’t know if you wanted me to stay. Didn’t want to make any assumptions.” She waved her hand at the suitcases on the porch. “If you’re not… if you’ve changed your mind about me, about us, I’ll find my own place.”

“Did I say I’d changed my mind?” he asked.

“You don’t seem very excited to see me,” she said. “You walked past me without saying a word.”

“Were you expecting a welcome back parade?” he said, holding her gaze with cool eyes.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I wasn’t expecting anything. I was hoping that you’d at least talk to me, though.”

He took a sip of coffee as he studied her. Shrugged his shoulders, as if he didn’t care one way or another. “So talk.”

She drew a shaky breath. She’d been a sniper, for God’s sake. She’d laid on rooftops in the burning desert sun, waiting to take out people who were trying to kill her friends. But she couldn’t find the words to talk to the man she loved?

“I’m still with Blackhawk Security, but I’m based in Chicago now, instead of Montana. I’ll be Cody Parker’s partner. He’s in Evanston, but Mel talked about moving the office to the city.”

“What does that have to do with me?” he asked, holding her gaze as he sipped at his coffee.

The scent of his coffee curled around her, and her mouth filled with saliva. After a long, mostly sleepless night, she’d kill for a cup of that coffee. But she wasn’t about to ask for one.

Swallowing hard, she said, “I was hoping you hadn’t changed your mind about me. That you still wanted… still cared about me.”

He studied her over the rim of the cup but didn’t say anything. As the seconds ticked by, she nodded. She had her answer.

She turned and grabbed the doorknob. Tried to open the door, but he’d locked the damn thing. Her hands shaking, she fumbled with the locks. When she couldn’t get them open, she kicked the door. Hard. Her toes throbbing, she leaned her forehead against the door. “Open the damn locks, Jameson.”

“I thought you said you were staying.”

“I am. But I’ll find my own place.” She grabbed the doorknob and yanked at it, even though she knew it wouldn’t open. “Damn it, Jameson! Open the door!”

She stared at the door, her eyes blurry with tears, then felt his hand on her arm. “I didn’t say I wanted you to leave,” he said in a low voice.

Wiping away the tears with her sleeve, she said, “You don’t seem very excited to see me.”

“What did you expect?” he shot back. “You walked away from me after the most amazing love-making of my life, with some lame-ass excuse about not being good enough for me. That you were protecting me.”

Tears pooled in her eyes as she stared at his shoes. “My head was so far up my ass I could see my tonsils,” she said without looking at him. “Even before I left, I knew I loved you, but didn’t know how to handle it. I’ve never been in love before. There’s never been anyone who was everything to me. Until you. It just took me a while to stop having panic attacks every time I thought about you.”

She took a deep breath, then released the words she’d wanted to say since she’d walked out his door. “I want you, Jameson. Forever.”

His shoulders relaxed, as if he hadn’t been expecting to hear that. “I want you, too, Bree. I’ll always want you. I want a life with you. I want to marry you. But we need to do some talking.”

After his coolness, she hadn’t been expecting that. Before she could pull away, he grabbed her hands. “Not tomorrow, babe. Not ever, if you don’t want those legal strings. But I want to get married. I think I’d like kids someday. A kick-ass girl. A nerdy boy.”

She was sucking in air when he finished, and he smiled. “In the future, Bree. Everything is negotiable. We’ll decide together what we want. And this…” he waved his hand at her, at the suitcases behind her “… is how it starts.”

“This is more than I expected,” she said, grabbing his hands. “More than I dreamed of.”

“I just want to be part of your life,” he said quietly. “And I want you to be part of my life. Living them together. Two normal people leading normal lives.”

She shook her head, staring at him. “There’s nothing normal about either of us. I’m a former sniper who’s now a bodyguard. There are at least two men after me who want to kill me. Don’t forget about that.”

“I trust you to protect me. And Mel and Dev strike me as extremely capable people. Mel said they were going after Kingsley and Larrimore. I’m certain they’ll take those two down.”

“But until they do, you’re in their crosshairs,” she said. “I’m complicating your life.”

“I trust you to protect me,” he said. “Okay? You can stop worrying about those two clowns.”

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