Page 26 of Rhys

Setting the glass down onto the bar, Rhys bypassed her and headed for the recliner. Picking up a heavy throw blanket folded neatly on one of the couch cushions, he removed his pistol from his waistband and placed it on the small end table next to him.

Vanessa watched as he settled himself into the chair and covered his legs with the blanket.

“You’re sleeping down here?”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“Just in case.”

In case the bad guys showed up, or in case she decided to take off like last time? The first was definitely a possibility. The latter, however…

Never again.

“I need my guns, Rhys.” She stood next to his chair and waited.

“No, you don’t.”

“Uh, yeah…I do.”

The frustrating man didn’t even bother to glance her way. Instead, he pulled his phone from his jeans pocket and began setting his alarm for morning.

Barely resisting the urge to growl, Vanessa yanked that phone from his hand and stared him down. “Okay, look. I get that you don’t trust me, but surely you know by now that I’m not out to hurt you.”

“And you should know by now that I’m not out to hurtyou. So if you’ll give me back my phone, we can both—”

“If whoever tried to kill me figures out we’re here, I can’t be left unarmed and unprotected.”

“You won’t be unprotected.”

“Really? ’Cause I didn’t recall seeing any guns or knives lying around upstairs in your spare bedroom.”

She wasn’t trying to be difficult or unappreciative, but after so many years as a clandestine agent, keeping a gun within reach at all times had become second nature.

“You don’t need a gun tonight, Ness.”

“No? And why is that?’

Exuding a cool confidence that was undeniably attractive, he rumbled, “Because you’ve got me.”

6

“She’s telling the truth.”

Greyson’s deep voice filled Rhys’s ear as he stared at his computer screen, unsure about how he should feel. His teammate had woken him up with an early as fuck phone call letting him know the prints he ran had come back to one Vanessa Marsh.

A thirty-one-year-old redhead from Beatrice, Nebraska whose parents—Elizabeth and Walter Marsh—had died tragically in a freak helicopter crash in Branson, Missouri.

Exactly as Vanessa had claimed.

“I gotta hand it to the spooks,” Greyson spoke again. “The Central Intelligence Agency did a hell of a job concealing her true identity. Took me a while, but I finally managed to get in.”

“It all matches,” Rhys mumbled more to himself than his friend. “The name, DOB, and where she grew up…the story about her parents. Everything you sent matches perfectly with what she told me last night.”

“That’s a good thing, right?” Grey’s optimistic tone grated on his nerves.

It was good in that he was finally beginning to feel as though he could trust her again. With the job, anyway. As for his heart, well… That was an entirely different story.

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