Page 22 of Her Reluctant Protector
She stirs. A small sound — not quite awake, not quite asleep. She shifts, and her hips press back, and every muscle in my body locks down so hard my teeth ache.
I close my eyes. Manufacture the rhythm of sleep with the precision I usually reserve for surveillance operations.
She goes still. A different stillness. Awake-still. The kind that means she knows exactly where my arm is, where my hand is, how much of her back is pressed against how much of my chest.
She doesn't move away.
A breath. Two. The ceiling fan clicks.
She settles deeper into me. Her hand finds my forearm, fingers resting against my wrist where my pulse is telling her everything my mouth never will.
She pretends to believe I'm sleeping. I let her.
Morning. Too bright, too soon, smelling like whatever she's already started baking. My arm is back on my side. She's downstairs. The bed is still warm where she was.
I press my hand flat against the warm spot before I pull it back.
I shower. Dress. Catalogue exits in the bathroom — the routine that's supposed to anchor me. Reset parameters. Remind me what I am. The need to control everything — every lock, every route, every variable — is the only tool I've ever trusted. I know this about myself. I know it's a wall, not a skill.Control is the language I speak when I don't have words for what's actually happening.
It doesn't work this morning.
The kitchen smells like cinnamon. Kari is at the counter, flour on her collarbone, talking to the oven. She doesn't look at me. The back of her neck is flushed pink.
"Coffee's on the counter," she says, too brightly.
We don't talk about the pillow wall. We don't talk about the pause when she woke up and found my arm around her and chose to stay.
I take my coffee to the porch. The silver Altima is back. Same spot, three houses down. Different time of day. Same plates.
My phone buzzes. March: Ownership chain is interesting. Call when you can.
I should call. I should focus on the shell companies, the law firm, the acquisition pattern. That's the job. That's what Vance is paying me for.
But my hand is still warm where I pressed it to the sheets, and my pulse is doing something it hasn't done in years — something that feels less like a heartbeat and more like a countdown.
I'm not afraid of whoever is behind the threats.
I'm afraid of her. Of how right she felt. Of the fact that when the wall came down and my body had every reason to retreat, I didn't. I chose to stay. I chose warmth over distance, closeness over control, and I'd do it again.
The professional distance isn't eroding. It's gone.
And my hand remembers her skin. My ribs remember her breathing. I am not just in trouble anymore.
I am hers.
Chapter 7
Kari
He was awake.
I know this the way I know the sticky drawer doesn't stick anymore and the porch step doesn't catch and the screen door latch sits flush. His breathing was too even. Too measured. The kind of breathing a man manufactures when he wants you to believe he's unconscious — and the kind a woman recognizes when she's spent enough nights next to the wrong men to know what honesty sounds like in the dark.
He was awake when the pillow wall collapsed. He was awake when his arm settled around my waist like his body had been waiting for the barrier to fall so it could do what it wanted.
And I pretended to believe him.
That's the part that keeps catching in my ribs this morning. Not that he held me, but that I let him. We built a mutual fiction in the dark, and the not-saying fills the kitchen like smoke.
