Page 58 of Ruthless Enforcer

48

GABRIEL

She falls asleep somewhere between the second act and the credits.

One moment she's rigid beside me, obviously hyperaware of every point where our bodies touch. The next, her breathing deepens and her head tips sideways, landing soft against my thigh.

I don't move.

The movie plays on, the happily ever after I'm not watching, and I keep my hand exactly where it is on her bare shoulder, fingers still. Eventually I'll have to move, and when I do, I won't be touching my wife anymore, so I'm in no fucking hurry.

Her hair has come loose from how she'd twisted it earlier, and strands fall across her face. There's a smudge of paint on her temple that she missed when she washed up. Her fingers are stained, her nails discolored by pigment, evidence of hours in the solarium I set up for her.

She trusts me enough to sleep. My wife—my temporary wife—sleeps against my leg like she belongs there.

I'm not moving because I like this—too much.

I could carry her to bed—her bed. Carrying her upstairs would be the logical choice, the one that doesn't involve me sitting here like an idiot, trapped under my sleeping wife.

I reach down and carefully, carefully brush a strand of hair away from her face. My fingers barely graze her skin, and she doesn't wake. Doesn't even stir.

I know what happily ever after looks like on the screen.

I wonder if this is what it looks like in real life.

49

CLARA

I'm in love with my husband.

The realization hits me somewhere between the third failed brushstroke and the moment I throw the palette knife across the solarium hard enough to leave a streak of cadmium red on the window.

I don't know what to do with it or all these feelings.

Gabriel has been locked in the study all day, his voice a low murmur through the cedar walls as he hunts Cole Turner.

I've tried to paint. I've tried to sketch. I've tried to do anything other than sit here and acknowledge that I have fallen catastrophically, irrevocably in love with my temporary husband.

So I do the only rational thing: I go outside, strip naked, and get into the hot tub.

The deck is exposed to the Oregon Coast, gray and wild and breathtaking in the failing light. The ocean crashes against the rocks below with a restlessness that suits my mood. The air is cold enough to sting, and the steam rising off the water curls into the wind like something alive.

I don't have a swimsuit.

I also don't care.

I sink into the heat with a low, involuntary sound of relief, letting the jets work against my shoulders and the tension I've been carrying since waking up curled on his lap this morning, when I realized Gabriel Reyes wasn't just dangerous, he was mine.

Temporarily mine—mine until Cole Turner is dead and the threat is neutralized and Gabriel can dissolve this marriage and return me to my previous life like a borrowed book he was never going to read.

I close my eyes and tip my head back against the edge of the tub. The problem is that I don't want my previous life. I want this one.

I want the man who retrieves my art supplies in the middle of the night and sits for me even though he hates being studied and cooks his mother's recipes while I sketch him at the stove. I want the badass who watches romantic comedies without irony. I want the man who carefully ensures every threat is being eliminated from my life.

I want Gabriel.

And I have absolutely no idea what to do about it.