Page 51 of Luke, The Profiler

Um, what? “Back? Where are we going?”

“Out. Wherever we finally land it’ll still be a helluva lot safer than where we are right now.”

*

Luke

First I made Kythe’s shit list, and now I’d made Nix’s. I shook my head as I locked my apartment door behind us and set the alarm. If I wasn’t careful, I’d wind up pissing off all my coworkers, but at the moment that was the least of my worries.

What mattered now was Eden.

For just a second, I closed my eyes and relived the moment when I’d turned down her street and saw her standing there in the center of her driveway. The setting sun touched her pale hair to make it glow in a way that had almost stopped my heart.

Then I’d realized she was alone, and my head almost exploded.

So when it came right down to it, I didn’t give a damn that I’d made Nix’s shit list. Whether he was willing to admit it or not, Nix should have been down there in the driveway with Eden, being the scary-ass bodyguard she was paying him insane amounts of money to be. But was he there? No.

Fucker was lucky I didn’t tear him a new one.

“Well, isn’t this nice.” Behind me, Eden pulled her houndstooth-patterned jacket tightly around her and took in her surroundings with a vaguely mutinous expression. “Care to tell me where the hell we are, and what we’re doing? Also, I had wanted to do a credential-related webinar at nine, so is there a Wi-Fi password available? Maybe I can still do it on my phone.”

“No webinar. No work. As of now, you and I are on a date.”

“Is that what this is? See, I didn’t know. I didn’t know because I haven’t heard a single word from you for two solid days. I didn’t even know you were no longer on my security detail until Echo told me, so I just went on with my life without you.”

Make that Kythe, Nix and Eden’s shit lists, I thought with a sigh. I really needed to get myself together.

“I got kicked off your case because of my involvement with you, and then I had work that took me out of town. Out of state, actually,” I corrected and pocketed the car keys. “The hush-hush kind of work that I sometimes have to do, but I’m back now and ready to spend some quality time with the woman I haven’t been able to get out of my head for two frigging days. I get that you want to bust my chops for not being in contact with you, and that’s valid. Also, you should probably take the lumber to me for being an arrogant ass and assuming you had no plans for tonight. But the fact is I’m dog-tired, genius. I’m tired, I’m in a pissy mood because no one’s taking care of you the way I think you should be taken care of, and I just want to spend every fucking free minute I have with you and no one else. So if you want to yell at me, can you get it over with so I can get down to the one thing I’ve been thinking about for days, which is being with you and just being… us?”

Watching the tension drain out of her was like watching the sun rise—beautiful, bordering on the miraculous. “You’re right, it really was arrogant of you to assume I didn’t have anything on my schedule. I mean, I could’ve had a date lined up for tonight.”

My appreciation of looking at this miraculous woman vanished. “Not fucking funny, Eden.”

“I’m not trying to be funny. I’m merely stating the truth.”

“Who the hell would you be seeing besides me? Give me a name.” I needed a name so I could find the sonofabitch and destroy him for even thinking about being near her.

She rolled her eyes. “Thanks to the very thorough background check PSI’s done on me, you know the name of every man I’ve ever dated. I’m just saying—”

“Have any of those fuckers gotten in touch with you?”

“What? Well, no—”

“You are not seeing anyone butme.” I stated it as fact and waited for her to agree with me. That was key. We both had to be in agreement on this, or it would never work.

The look she gave me didn’t inspire a shit-ton of confidence. “I can’t tell. Are you asking me, or telling me?”

“You,” I repeated, coming close to hook a hand around her nape so she had no choice but to look me in the eye, “are not seeing anyone butme. There’s no other man in your life, just like there’s no other woman in my life except you. That’s how we are, and that’s how we’re going to be from now on. Understand?”

“I… Yes.” Again, some undefined tension in her melted away, and that softening in her eyes hit me in places I didn’t even know I had. “There’s no other man in my life except you, Luke. And there’d better be no woman in your life except me.”

That made me smile. “Are you the jealous type?”

“I never have been before. But you could make me that way.”

“Yeah?” Warmth spread through me so hard and fast it made breathing impossible. “Damn, woman.”

“What?”

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