Page 34 of Price of Angels

“Nah, not really. And if they do, nobody cares. There’s all kinds of shooting that goes on around here.”

“How reassuring,” she said, dryly.

“It should be. We’ve got absolute privacy.” And he leaned into the backseat for the backpack he’d left there earlier.

Tangled grass grew right up to the edge of the barn on the other side, the unmown stalks dead and brown and matted to together like the coat of an old unloved dog. But the ground was fairly level, once you got down the gently graded slope against the wall, and moved down into a little hollow nestled among the eleagnus. Birds shot from the brush at their approach, doves fluttering hard to escape their path. Two rabbits darted for cover, brown coats gleaming in the bright winter sun.

Holly smiled, and slowly, slowly, her pulse began to settle, and her nerves to firm up.

“What a pretty old farm,” she murmured. “Why’s it abandoned?”

Michael shrugged. “My boss inherited it when his old man died. I think it had bad memories, or something.”

“Hmm. I can understand that.”

“Yeah?” He cast her a fast, unobtrusive look that she met with silence, then shrugged again. “Wait here, and I’ll get everything set up.”

With his backpack and his leather jacket and his perfect-fitting jeans, he walked about fifteen yards straight out from the place they stood, to a place where three sheets of plywood were set up between two rickety sawhorses. The plywood was full of little holes where daylight shone through – they weren’t the first two people to use this spot for target practice.

Michael let the bag fall to the ground, and crouched to pull things out of it: paper targets, tape, a few old beer bottles. Behind her sunglasses, Holly watched not what he withdrew from the bag, but the man himself, soaking in all the little details she wasn’t afforded in the dark of Bell Bar every night. The way the leather stretched tight across his back, highlighting the exact shape of his shoulder blades, and the sleek muscles around them. The way his jeans gapped a little in back and she could see the white waistband of his…yeah, boxer-briefs, if she had to guess, dark gray, contrast stitching. All over his body, his muscles were compact and close to his body; a wealth of strength without all the extra bulk. She loved the proportions of him. The way at six feet, he was taller than the other men in her life had been, but the height never made her feel any smaller. It was never really size that made a person feel little, after all, but words. Deeds. Evil intent.

But the time he’d finished setting up a line of targets and beer bottles for her to shoot, and was walking back, Holly had realized something. She wanted him. She’d never thought she’d feel that way, not after all that had happened. Sex was an awful, filthy thing for her. But she wanted this man. And even though the idea of actually being with him scared her witless, she couldn’t deny the acuteness of her fascination, the deep physical ache inside her. It didn’t even have to be sex; she craved something small, some tiny gesture of affection and intimacy.

Pathetic.

“Okay.” He reached her, and the bag went on the ground again. He spread a black-stained kitchen towel on the soft bed of grass, and then the guns came out. “We’ll start with this” – a small revolver with a long blue barrel that glimmered in the sun – “and move on to these” – another revolver, larger, heavier, with a shorter barrel, and two matte semiautos that had the hair on the back of her neck standing up.

He tipped his head back, so he was looking up at her as he crouched on the ground. As if he could read her thoughts, he said, “Don’t be intimidated. They won’t jump up and shoot you all by themselves. They only do what you make them do.”

She took a deep breath. “I know.”

“What’s scarier: these? Or the fact that you felt scared enough to try and hire a hit man?”

She frowned at him. “Not a very good hit man.”

Undeterred, he stood, the small revolver in one hand. “Pay attention now. This is a .22 magnum…”

She had small hands, but he said that didn’t matter. With a touch like feathers brushing across her skin, he cupped a hand beneath hers, showed her where to rest the grip of the gun, positioned her fingers where they needed to be. He touched her arms, elevated them to the proper angle, so they were straight out in front of her. He stood behind her, and tipped her head so she could align the sights properly, with one eye closed. When he stood behind her, she could feel his radiant body heat; she could smell the cigarette smoke, the shampoo, the cologne. He’d put cologne on, to come shooting with her. Her heart danced. What would it be like, she wondered, if he closed his arms around her, pulled her back into his chest? What would if feel like to be embraced, rather than subdued?

Michael wasn’t capable of such softness, she reasoned, as he stepped clear of her. Best not to wish for things that would never happen. Wishing had never gotten her anywhere in the past anyway.

“Target on the left,” Michael instructed. “Aim for the bullseye. Line up your sights – there, like that – and remember what I said. Deep breath in, half out, hold it, relax, aim and slowly pull the trigger back.”

“Got it,” she said, and took her deep breath, closed her right eye, stared down the barrel of the .22 toward the green and black paper bullseye affixed to the plywood downrange. She let half of the breath out, finger caressing the trigger. Then held it, pulled back slowly –

The gun went off with a ripping crack of sound. The barrel kicked upward, toward the sky, grip tugging at her hands.

“Jesus!” She fumbled the weapon, managed not to drop it. “Oh my God.” Her heart was hammering against her breastbone, thumping in the pads of her fingers where they touched the gun. Michael had been right – the recoil hadn’t been strong at all – but she still hadn’t been expecting such movement, even after watching Michael shoot a few rounds. The gun had looked so controlled in his hands. She felt small and weak and incapable, and it made her throat tight with stress.

“I’m sorry,” she said, glancing from the unblemished target to Michael, who watched her from behind his Ray-Bans with something almost like real interest. “I figured I wouldn’t be any good.”

He gave the tiniest smile, wider than the usual twitching. It warmed her immediately, helped with the sense of inadequacy. “Honey, nobody hits the target on their first shot.”

Honey. She could float away on that word. She wondered if he knew he’d said it, or if it had slipped out without his consent.

“Not even you?” she asked.

“Well…I did. But that’s different.”

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