Chapter One #2
Cargo shorts hung low on his hips, and he’d misplaced his shirt somewhere.
Every muscle was defined, his body too perfect to be real.
She blinked, but he didn’t vanish like she’d half-expected.
Instead, he lifted the mug to his lips, drawing her attention to his impossibly broad shoulders, which tapered to a narrow waist and, good gracious, what were those muscles called that created a V leading directly into his shorts?
Her face felt impossibly warm despite the mild August morning and she was suddenly sure that she was blushing furiously.
Keep walking. Just put one foot forward and keep walking .
She couldn’t move. She couldn’t do anything other than stand there and stare at him until he nodded briefly at her, turned around, and walked back into his house.
What in God’s name just happened?
***
Jude MacNamara left his place as soon as night fell.
He didn’t like moving around Callaway Rock during the day.
Fuck, he didn’t like small towns in general.
Everyone had too much time on their hands and felt like it was their God-given right to stick their noses into their neighbors’ business.
He’d had to run off over a dozen attempts to welcome him into town since he moved here three months ago, and that hadn’t done a damn thing to dissuade anyone.
If anything, it made the locals more determined to figure out everything there was to know about him.
They were wasting their time. He was here for a job. He sure as fuck wasn’t staying.
He stalked onto the beach, pausing only to make sure no teenagers had thought it was a brilliant idea to have a beach fire tonight.
Clear . Unlike the towns farther north, Callaway Rock didn’t get much in the way of tourists.
Maybe if they had, he wouldn’t have had to actually buy a house here while he waited for his target to reappear.
Jude lifted a pair of binoculars. In his dark clothes and with the ocean at his back, he was damn near invisible on a night like this, especially with clouds covering the moon.
He gave the beach to the north and south of him a cursory look to reconfirm that there was no one but him out tonight and then he turned to his real target.
The O’Connor house.
It had been unoccupied since he’d gotten to town, but a little over a week ago, a woman had moved in.
She was about fifty years too young to be Sorcha O’Connor, and the coloring was all wrong regardless.
This woman—Sloan—had both dark hair and eyes, not the blond hair and blue eyes that ran through Sorcha’s family.
He paused his binoculars at each window, taking in the little changes that had come with the new resident.
After he’d moved to Callaway Rock, he’d broken in and gone through the entire house, looking for clues to where Sorcha might have gone and familiarizing himself with the layout in the event that he’d need to return.
There was nothing of the former, and the latter was laughably easy.
With the massive windows and fact that the curtains and shutters were never closed, he hadn’t had to set foot in the place to figure out everything he needed to know. But it paid to be thorough.
What he couldn’t figure out was who the hell this Sloan was and how she was connected to Sorcha O’Connor.
For a second, right when he found her peering into his windows that first night, he’d half convinced himself that she was actually Callista Sheridan, come to visit her long-lost aunt.
A coup like that…It made his adrenaline spike just thinking about it.
What better way to make Colm Sheridan suffer than removing his beloved daughter from the equation?
She was the only child he had left, after all—though recently she’d been too protected for Jude to even consider.
He’d have to wait until things died down to circle back to Boston.
But as soon as the woman stepped into the light, he’d realized his mistake.
Even if her coloring could be faked, this wasn’t Callista.
He’d seen her a time or two over the years, and she carried herself as a woman used to having her orders followed without question, even before she took over the Sheridan empire.
Sloan? She seemed to have her shoulders perpetually hunched, as if expecting a blow. He couldn’t tell if it was an abusive ex or something else, but she was fleeing something. It’s none of my fucking business if she is. She’s not my target. Colm’s sister Sorcha is.
He’d bide his time and see how this played out. His vengeance had waited this long—it could wait a little bit more.
Every light was lit inside the house, and he watched Sloan walk through it, pausing to touch the marble kitchen counter, the thick mantel over the fireplace, the back cushion on the couch facing the massive windows.
Then she disappeared, reappearing in the guest room, her hands going to the buttons at the front of her dress.
Jude’s body sprang to attention when he realized what was happening.
Put the damn binoculars down. Sorcha isn’t there, and this girl isn’t your mark .
But he didn’t put them down. Instead, he watched as she shrugged out of the dress, leaving her in only a pair of silk white panties and an equally white bra.
She looked innocent, untouchable, and he could barely wrap his mind around it.
It took considerable willpower to lower the binoculars as she reached behind her to unhook her bra, but he wasn’t a goddamn peeping tom.
Jude laughed softly. Sure, stand on your high moral horse.
You fucking kill people for a living and you’re going to be honorable about watching some woman who you’ve met once undress.
There have to be lines. Even if they don’t always make sense .
Mystery past or not, that woman was an innocent. It was…odd. These days, most of the people he associated with were people who made their living on the underbelly of society. They’d all seen things, same as him. They didn’t blink at the choices he’d made or the path that had brought him to them.
Jude didn’t spend much time around innocents.
He’d seen the way she looked at him this morning, though.
Even across the distance between them, the hunger in her eyes had been readily recognizable.
It made him hot just thinking about it. What would she do if he walked up to her front door right now and knocked?
Would she answer in a robe? Would she submit if he closed the distance between them and kissed her?
Jude cursed long and hard, his cock so hard it was a wonder it didn’t burst out of his jeans. He had no business thinking shit like that, not while he was on the hunt he’d spent his entire life preparing for and sure as fuck not about a woman who had some kind of connection with his target.
An innocent .
He was half-surprised he could even recognize that trait in another person.
He’d never been one. He hadn’t had a chance to be.
That opportunity had been taken away the moment Colm Sheridan declared the death sentence on Jude’s father and brothers—the same death sentence he would have delivered to Jude’s mother if he’d known she was pregnant.
No, there was no room for innocence in his life.
There was only revenge.