Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 46223 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 231(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46223 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 231(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
“Was it stupid?” she asks. “The dinner?”
“No,” I say honestly. “It was controlled. It bent the story toward ours. And it reminded whoever’s watching that we decide what they get.”
She smiles, tired and bright. “You really don’t regret this?” she asks. “Me. Us. Crossing the line.”
“Vanessa.” I step in, taking her face in my hands. “I don’t regret a second. I just won’t trade your safety for easy.”
She huffs a laughing breath. “Who said anything about easy?”
“Fair point.” I brush my thumbs over her cheekbones and feel the way her body checks in, breath syncing without us asking it to.
My secure vibrates on the table.
Rae: Challenger’s plate is fresh-printed. Pulled the store camera where it was made—guy in a cap with a messenger bag paid cash. Turner ID’d him as a friend of Kellan’s from way back. We’re stacking dominos.
“Copy,” I text back, then flip the phone facedown and let the window go to war with its own reflection.
She tilts her mouth to mine. The kiss starts like a thank-you and picks up on a curve into want. It’s not for the cameras. It’s not to sell a brand. It’s the kind you give because your hands will ache if you don’t. I angle her back a half-step, and she goes with me, fingers sliding up my arms, finding purchase like she’s memorized where the strength is. My palm settles at her lower back, pulling her close, all the worry burned off the edges.
“Riggs,” she whispers against my lips, and it’s not a warning this time. It’s a promise disguised as my name.
“Yeah?”
“What happens when this is all over?” Her eyes slay me with the need written so deeply in them.
I shake my head once. “I’m not sure.” I’d like to tell her I have all the answers, that I can predict the future, but I’m just a man. A man who wants to give this woman the happily ever after she deserves.
We end up on the couch, sideways, her tucked under my arm, the city doing its neon heartbeat beyond the glass. We don’t turn on a movie. We don’t need noise. We just need each other.
“I can change a tire in a dress,” she confesses.
“I can braid hair under fire,” I tell her.
“I hate when people open potato chip bags upside down.”
“I wedge doors with actual wedges.”
She laughs into my shoulder, and I feel it through bone. “We’re ridiculous.”
“We’re alive,” I say, and pull a blanket over her legs because the AC’s always freezing in hotel rooms. “And we’re winning.”
The room falls silent, and then she runs her finger over my chest.
“I’m falling for you,” she says into my shirt, too soft for the world, perfect for this distance.
It hits like stepping into shade after hours of sun. “Yeah,” I say, because I can't not fall for her. “Me too.”
We sit in it. Not the danger. The ease after. And I realize the thing that’s been threading through all the operations and counter-surveillance and wedges. The chemistry isn’t a threat to the mission. It’s fuel. It makes me sharper, not softer. It makes the picture of after a map instead of a wish.
My secure vibrates once more.
Dean: Saw the clips. Keep using the cover. Turner’s close. Give me your restaurant cam pulls when you have them.
I send the packet, set an alarm for 3 a.m., and kiss the crown of Vanessa’s head because there’s no camera to see me do it and I want to anyway.
“Sleep,” I tell her.
“Order me around again,” she murmurs, teasing.
“Sleep, Vanessa,” I say, and feel her smile.
She does. Eventually, so do I, with one arm around her and the city pressed against the glass like a hand. Tomorrow will be noise and planning and maybe a plate falling just right somewhere we don’t want it to. Tonight is a couch, a vow, and a woman who tastes like lime and laughter and the promise I’ve been careful enough to keep.
We made it back unscathed. We’ll do it again. And when someone says closer, I’ll be the line he can’t cross, and she’ll be the light that doesn’t dim.
14
Vanessa
The boutique smells like linen and lemon oil. Sunlight pours through the front windows in fat rectangles, turning the silk dresses on the rack into lit glass. Lina flits around me with pins between her lips, Brice is already bossing a ring light into an existential crisis, and Riggs stands where the room turns into a hallway—back to a pillar, eyes everywhere, hands idle only because he’s dangerous when they’re not.
I’m in the third look—soft green silk that drapes like it knows what it’s doing—when Brice claps for attention. “Quick pivot,” he sings, headset askew. “Vanessa, the designer wants a ‘private reveal’ in the back fitting area, just you and me for an audio confessional before we roll the reels. Two minutes. Everyone else—reset the front for the street shots.”