Page 31 of The Agent
She tossed him a green pepper before she braced her hands on the counter and said, “I don’t get it. You’re rich, successful, fantastic in bed, and you chop vegetables. Why aren’t you married?”
He placed the pepper carefully on the cutting board, even as her words expanded in his chest. “Is that a proposal?”
“You’re a great guy but I have no intention of ever marrying again.” Her voice rang with conviction before she smiled. “So no need to panic.”
“I’m not the marrying kind.” His standard brush-off. Then he realized he wanted to be partially honest with her. “When I was in the FBI, I gravitated toward the more, er, exciting assignments. That wasn’t conducive to family life.”
“I’m guessing that ‘exciting’ is code for dangerous.” She threw a bunch of ingredients in with the chicken. “But now your job is less hazardous.”
He shrugged. “I got out of the habit of thinking about marriage.” Again, partially correct. The real truth was that he refused to have children. He’d seen his parents pass on their problems to his siblings and, in a way, to himself. Not a chance that he was going to do that to another generation.
She gave him a sideways smile. “It only takes two months to form a new habit. You’d make such a wonderful, overprotective dad.”
A sense of loss jabbed at him. He liked kids but he would make do with being a Big Brother. “Emphasis on the ‘overprotective,’” he said with a wry grimace. “It’s a tough world to raise kids in.”
“Is that why you shy away from it? You’ve seen too much of the underbelly of life?”
“I’m an adrenaline junkie. That’s not a good way to be, if you’re a father.” He’d admitted his addiction to her and that was enough on the topic. He scraped the chopped peppers into his hand. “Where do you want these?”
She slid a small glass bowl across the counter. “Sorry. That was a personal question.”
“It’s fine, but I’m curious about why you asked,” he admitted.
“Seeing you there at my kitchen counter, with a knife in one hand and a pepper in the other, made me look at you in a different way, I guess. I’d never imagined you at home before. You seem as comfortable here as you are with a gun in your hand.”
She was way too right about that. “You make me comfortable.” Nope, that was the wrong thing to say because he didn’t want to acknowledge the truth of it. “Besides, I figure the faster I chop, the faster I’ll eat.”
She laughed, a low musical sound. “The chicken is going in the oven now. Let me add some shrimp to the salad so you can dig right into that.”
While she plated the salads—one large, one tiny—he admired her slim, elegant fingers, remembering how they felt on his skin. It struck him that she felt free to prod him about marriage because she meant it when she said she would never marry again. That gave her the freedom to discuss his marital status because she had no interest in his answers for herself. Anger at her ex-husband roiled up again. Natalie shouldn’t be alone for the rest of her life because of that asshat.
Natalie laid her hand on Tully’s solid shoulder—regrettably, now covered by his T-shirt—and leaned over to peer at her laptop. The screen was split into four quadrants, one for each side of her house. “Wow! You covered everything.”
He shook his head. “I need to adjust camera three. There’s still a small blind spot just below it. If your stalker is tech savvy enough to use a key-fob reader, he could figure out the blind spot.”
Natalie’s stomach lurched. Tully had made sure she had the number for the local police dispatcher on speed dial. He’d also followed up her call to the police chief to make sure the cop took her stalker seriously.
She’d finally reached the fourth ex-wife, who confirmed that she had not mentioned a word about Natalie to her husband. Regina Van Houten was still in the wind. That worried Natalie but it also made her believe that Regina hadn’t discussed her sanctuary with her husband.
Tully took her hand and turned it to kiss the palm, his lips making her skin tingle. Then he twisted in his chair to look at her. “Okay, what’s the drill when I’m not here?”
“My laptop stays on and plugged in at all times so the surveillance software is running. If it sounds an alarm, I call the police first and then you. If I’m not at my house, I make sure to stay away from it. If I’m in my house, I go to my bedroom and wedge a chair under the doorknob. Then I go in the bathroom, lock the door, and wedge another chair under that doorknob. Oh, and I have a container of pepper gel in every room.” She glanced at the black plastic cylinder sitting on the kitchen counter.
Tully had unpacked an array of security supplies from the giant black duffel bag he’d hauled out of his car, including a box of police-grade pepper gel canisters with dye to mark the stalker. He’d also put smaller versions of pepper spray in her purse and laptop bag.
“And?” he prompted.
“If he confronts me, use the pepper gel without hesitation. Aim for the face. Don’t talk to him. Just escape in whatever way possible. My imperative is to get away,” she repeated his instructions. He’d already taken her outside to spray the stuff so she could get a feel for how hard she had to squeeze the button.
“Good.” His voice was crisp with approval. “Can you do that?”
“Yes.” She meant it. “It helps to have a plan mapped out.”
“We’ll go over it with Pam as well before I leave.”
Disappointment crashed through her. She’d somehow assumed that he would spend the night after they’d had sex. Shewantedhim to spend the night, to fall asleep and wake up with his big, powerful, naked body beside her in her bed.
Something of her feelings must have shown in her face, because he stood and hooked his fingers in her belt loops to pull her against him. He brushed a soft kiss over her lips. “I have an antikidnapping training session scheduled with a client tonight. And it’s the kind of client who requires that I be there.”
