Page 18 of Hunted Hearts
He stripped off his T-shirt, and wearing only the gray sweatpants he donned for the evening shift of guarding a closed—and probably locked—bedroom door, he uncoiled the rope and began to jump.
The first few skips were a bit clumsy. He always jumped better with music, so he paused to find a playlist with a good, driving beat and started again.
The pulse of gangster rap music slammed through him, the rhythm catching in his chest as he moved double-time, crisscrossing the rope with precision.
From the corner of his eye, he caught movement. The next moment the bedroom door was flung open and Juliette burst into the sitting room in a pair of lounge pants and a tiny top that skimmed the waistband so when she threw her hand up on the doorframe, he saw a sliver of her bare stomach.
Her dark eyebrows arrowed toward each other like the jagged line of a lightning strike. Her eyes shot sparks…
Then they turned hazy as her gaze panned over him.
He slowed. “Can I help you?”
She jabbed a finger toward her ear and shook her head, indicating that she couldn’t hear him over the music. He leaned over the coffee table and pressed pause on the music.
When he straightened, her stare fixed on his chest. “Are you okay?” he asked.
She blinked and a pale pink flush landed in her cheeks. “Uh…I…can’t concentrate.”
“Well, you didn’t have your evening supplements.”
Confusion washed over her face again. “True, but I wasn’t talking about the supplements. I was trying to meditate, and your music is interrupting me.”
His lips twisted. “Sorry, I didn’t think it was very loud.”
“It was.” She darted a look at his phone. “Figures your taste in music is rap.”
He folded his arms over his chest, and her gaze came with it, plastering to his muscle for several long beats. Time stretched so long that he considered snapping his fingers in front of her face, but shereallywouldn’t like that.
He waited for her to stop staring at his chest as if she were too timid to meet his gaze, but he knew that wasn’t the issue.
As if released from the clutches of a trance, she shook herself all over. Drawinghisattention toher. Her hair hung in long waves around her face, thick and almost too heavy for her delicate frame to hold up. Tiny silver hoops shimmered in her earlobes, catching the deep pink and molten orange hues of the fading sunset that spilled through the tall windows of the top-floor suite.
She shifted her weight to one hip, and he followed the curve to her leg and ended on her curled, bare toes.
“I listen to a lot of different music.” His words seemed to break whatever hold she had on him, and he reached to swipe his phone off the table. “I’ve traveled a lot—in gear, in case you were going to ask.”
She stared at him. “You’re entitled to your listening tastes, and to working out…but as you mentioned, I couldn’t take mysupplements, and my brain is firing in every direction except the one I want it to.”
She talked with her hands, fluttering them around her head as if she could show him the inner workings of her mind—without her supplements.
“I was just trying to clear my head. It’s been a long day.”
“I was trying to clearminetoo. And ditto on the long day. I’m sure there’s an open room here on the floor. You did, after all, kick out everybody who’s not on my team.”
He tilted his head, eyeing her. “Depending on what my software reveals, your team might get kicked out too.”
She gasped. “Are you insinuating one of them is trying to scare me?”
“Guilty until proven innocent.”
“Isn’t this a free country? I thought the saying was reversed.” The pink in her cheeks deepened a shade.
A knock on the door killed anything he was about to say.
He jerked his head at the open bedroom door. “Go in your room and wait until I tell you it’s clear.”
Her jaw dropped.
