Page 41 of Tate
No, she wasn’t ready. Not yet. So she leaned away.
A shout erupted behind her. Sloan looked up, his eyes widening a second before something—or someone—hit her from behind. Slammed her into Sloan, and they all went down in a tumble.
A shot cracked, and it hit the house, chipping off mortar and brick.
Glo lay atop Sloan, who’d broken her fall in his embrace, but over the top of both of them, one of the security personnel covered their bodies.
Where had he come from?
“Stay down!” he hissed.
She felt his body over her, solid, warm, protective.
She froze. No?—
But she couldn’t look as more shots barked.
Then feet hammered the veranda, shouts and return gunfire.
The man protecting her was breathing hard, a tiny groan to his voice, and she deduced he might be in pain.
Shot?
Please—no?—
“Let’s get them inside!”
She recognized Sly’s terse voice, and the man protecting them rolled away.
Sly grabbed her arm, helped her to her feet, and wasted no time hustling her back inside, Sloan on her tail.
Sly led her behind the bar and instructed them both to get down, but she wasn’t moving until?—
Yes. Oh no, sheknewit. But what on earth?—?
Tate came into the room, a gun drawn, his face whitened with pain.
He turned his back to the wall, leaned his head back, and met her eyes.
And incredibly, offered her a rogue, one-sided smile. “Hey, babe. Miss me?”
Glo had nearly gotten shot on Tate’s watch.
No, while he’d been watching Slick Sloan hit on her, reeling her in for a kiss.
Tate might be ill, right here in the corner of Liam Anderson’s dark-paneled office. If not from the memory of Glo looking up at Sloan like…
Like she’d looked at Tate two short weeks ago. Might have been a decade for the way she acted. Apparently, it took exactly two weeks for her to forget he existed.
And while he’d been standing there, corralling the Neanderthal desire to throw Sloan off the balcony—definitely not a part of his job description—a sniper had adjusted his gun just enough for the setting sun to glint off the barrel.
A smart sniper would have wrapped his weapon, to protect it from betraying tells.
Tate’s instincts had simply kicked in and he’d leapt at Glo, taking Sloan down too.
A sort of collateral save, really, but it made him look good.
Even if his shoulder felt like he’d torn something and threatened to send him to his knees. The pain radiated down his arm and across his back. He’d barely held in a shriek of pain as he landed on it, sweat beading on his forehead as he held Glo and Sloan down long enough for his crew to arrive for backup.
