Page 62 of First Star I See Tonight (Chicago Stars 8)

“I think it came out exactly the way you meant,” she said quietly.

“No, it didn’t.” He cupped her shoulders. She didn’t pull away. Instead, she lifted her head and stared him down, daring him to insult her again.

Her shoulders nestled in his palms. Her personality was so big that he sometimes forgot how small she was compared to him. “Pipe, you love what you do, and all I’m saying is—that could be impairing your judgment.”

She actually seemed to think it over. Finally, she shook her head. “No. But apology accepted.”

He hadn’t really apologized.

“And you’re the one with the impaired judgment. You want to believe the attack was random, so you’ve closed your mind to any other possibility.”

Her motives were pure, if wrongheaded. “I wish I’d had you on my offensive line when I was playing. Nobody would have been able to touch me.”

She smiled—open and genuine. Sulking wasn’t in her nature.

He wasn’t exactly sure when their eyes locked, only that he still had his hands on her shoulders and that his aches and pains seemed to have faded. She lifted her arm, and her fingers brushed his bruised jaw in a caress so gentle he could barely feel it. The breeze blew a strand of dark hair across her cheek. He wasn’t used to looking at anyone like this. Gazing so deeply. Seeing nothing but big eyes and a soft, inviting mouth. Kissing her felt like the most natural thing in the world.

She could have stopped him simply by turning her head, but she didn’t. She opened her lips and slipped her hands under his sweatshirt to touch his bare back.

Their kiss gathered heat, and their bodies melded. A hot rush of blood ripped through him. All he wanted was to be inside her. To satisfy her in a way no one ever had. He wanted to hear her moan. Have her beg him. Want him as much as he wanted her.

She had his sweatshirt off. He pulled her top over her head. She wore a black bra beneath. He drew her toward the big chaise.

The purple cushions were soft, but he landed on his bad side and winced.

She jerked back from him as if she’d burned him. “We can’t. You’re—”

He stopped her words with his mouth and rolled to his good side, taking her with him. He cupped her bottom through her jeans. He had to get them off her. Strip everything away. He heard a buzzing in his head as he slipped his finger under her bra strap. His lips went to her shoulder. The buzzing grew louder. Pushing him on. Louder still. More demanding.

She shoved herself away from him so abruptly he nearly fell off the chaise.

She reached for something.

The buzz . . . it wasn’t coming from inside his sex-obsessed brain. It was coming from above them.

A silver X-shaped drone hovered in the air overhead. He let out a blistering curse. The drone made a small circle just above the garden. Circled again.

And then it exploded.

Shards of fiberglass, plastic, and metal flew everywhere.

Piper stood in the middle of his garden, dressed only in her jeans and a black bra, her arm raised. And in her hand, the hand that had, only moments before, been caressing him, she held a semiautomatic pistol.

One shot. That’s all it had taken for her to bring down the drone. One perfect shot.

He sagged against the brick terrace wall. Nothing like a woman with a gun to spoil the mood.

13

The street below the terrace wall was quiet, with only a dog walker and a female jogger in sight. “You stay here,” Piper ordered as she pulled her T-shirt back over her head and bolted toward the French doors.

“Like hell!”

They spent the next hour scouring the neighborhood together. It would have been more efficient to split up, but Piper wanted to keep him in her sight. No one on the street had seen anyone operating a drone, but all of them wanted to talk to Coop about his career.

On the elevator back up to his condo, he finally got around to the question he’d been waiting to ask. “Are you always packing?”

“Not in the club, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

---