Page 31 of Shadow Secrets
She wiped her face with the back of her hand and drew a shaky breath. “I want to see him.”
“Too dangerous. The assassin may have hurt him exactly for that purpose—to draw you out.”
Her gaze was fierce as it swung to him. “You’re my bodyguard, right? You’ll protect me, just like you did Ginger and the others when you were in the Service.”
He wanted to argue that it wasn’t the same. The argument would be pointless and untrue. “The safest place for you is here.”
“I know. But what, I’m supposed to live here indefinitely? Or until this asshole decides to give up? I’m not allowed to have a life anymore? Not go see the one person in this world that took a chance on me and gave me a fresh start?” She shook her head again, adamant this time. “No. You’re taking me to see Dom, and then we’re going to clean up the parlor so it’s not a disaster when he comes home.”
If he comes home. Sebastian didn’t hold out much hope. He stared at their intertwined fingers. “You admitted you put yourself in danger going to your apartment. This is worse.”
“We’ll be at the hospital. A place full of people, security, and cameras. No one’s going to attack me there.”
It was safer than her apartment had been, but he couldn’t justify it. “We’ll figure it out. Not tonight, but we’ll figure something out, okay?”
She nodded, blowing out a sigh and slumping back against the wall again. The distance between them had shrunk, not only physically, but in other ways now, too.
Sleep wouldn’t come for him, but eventually, her eyelids drooped. Her head landed on his shoulder.
He didn’t move, the blanket bunched beneath him. He snuck glances at her face, her legs, her tatts. His imagination took over again, and it was all he could do not to trace one of his fingers over her thigh tattoo, her shoulder. To wake her up and kiss her.
Get a grip. She was alone and scared; that was the only reason she was sitting here next to him. Underneath it all, she hated him, and always would. He couldn’t blame her—how could she ever look at him as anything but her brother’s killer?
And the last thing he needed was a complication like her in his life. He dated only briefly a few years ago. No one serious. No matter who he went out with, he always wondered in the back of his mind if they really liked him or the image the media had created after the assassination attempt.
Forcing himself to think through the tactical failures he’d made in order to keep himself distracted from Sutton’s body, he pinned his gaze on the wall across from them. Dom unprotected, Iron Rose unsecured, the assumption that removing Sutton from the apartment removed the threat from her orbit. Sloppy. The kind of thinking that got people hurt.
And Dom had paid the price.
Sutton shifted. When he glanced down, her eyes were open. Their hands were still loosely linked. She watched him with unguarded boldness and began tracing his hand with a finger.
He tried not to visibly react to her soft touch, but he sucked in an audible breath before he could control it.
She raised her head, holding his gaze. “Tell me about your family,” she said quietly.
Once again, she surprised him. He wanted to get lost in her eyes, absorb the feeling of her finger tracing over his hand. For a moment, his brain wouldn’t shift gears—all he could think about were her full lips so close to his.
“Is that topic off limits?” she asked when his answer didn’t come immediately.
He cleared his throat, dragged his focus from her mouth, and felt the ripples of vulnerability move outward through territory he’d spent years fencing off. “Not much to tell.”
“Come on. Everyone has a story.”
He exhaled, a shiver passing through him as she continued to torture him with her finger that now drifted to his exposed forearm.
“I’m from Greenwich, Connecticut,” he said, his voice sounding rough to his own ears. “Old money. My grandfather was a senator. My father runs a hedge fund. My mother chairs charitable foundations and hosts galas where everyone pretends to care about the same causes. My sister Charlotte went to Princeton, then Harvard Law, then a corner office at a firm. She married an investment banker. They have two kids.”
He took a breath, blew it out. “My mother called when you were in the shower.” The admission slipped out before he’d decided to make it. He blamed the dark and the warmth of her hand on his forearm. “First time in months. She wanted to tell me there are reporters parked outside their gate in Greenwich.”
Sutton’s finger paused on his skin. “Not because she’s worried about you?”
“She doesn’t worry about anyone. She wanted to know if I’d consider making a statement. To manage the narrative.”
“That’s cold. What did you tell her?”
“I told her to hire a private security detail for the house, and to tell Charlotte to stop giving the family’s unlisted numbers to anyone who asked nicely. I told her no statements.” He paused. “She cried. I haven’t heard her cry since I was thirteen.”
The finger on his arm started moving again, slower now. “I’m sorry.”
