Chapter Twenty-One #2
“Ava,” he said softly. “I don’t want you to get hurt.” The words came out breathless. Soft. Uncomfortably genuine. “I just—my client is dangerous. And the less you know, the better.”
It was true, as much truth as he could offer her, because she already knew too much. He was becoming more like her, bleeding truth before he could stop himself, littering details of himself in every interaction. It was fucking dangerous.
When she was dead silent, Jack looked back up at her.
Ava wasn’t looking at him. “Let’s go back to talking about the murder skills you’re going to teach me,” she said. Her voice was cold, distant, her eyes fixed on some point out the window. “Or I can tell you about the cover I made up for us.”
Jack sighed. “I’ll teach you to shoot,” he said. “And I’m going to work on my cross-stitch while you tell me about the cover.”
They definitely didn’t need a cover. In fact, it would be better not to have some complicated story to stick to.
Ava’s jaw was set, determined, belying the lightness in her tone as she spoke: “We’re a young couple, wildly in love—”
Jack pulled his cross-stitch from his duffel. What kind of life had Ava been leading, that one single mention that Jack cared what happened to her was enough to shut her down? And since when did Jack care what happened to anyone but himself? “No, we’re not wildly in—”
“In lust, then.” Ava waved her hand airily, but her eyes remained hard. “Nobody can ever tell the difference. We’re honeymooning on the Oregon coast. My name is Amélie Belle—very sophisticated, very fancy, there’s definitely an accent on the e—and your name is Greg.”
“Why do I have to be Greg?”
“Gary, then.” Jack settled opposite her with his cross-stitch.
“Gary? Do I look like a Gary?”
“Would you prefer Gilbert?” Ava asked him cheerfully, sliding her sweatpants down and stepping out of them without a second thought. “Because that’s where we’re headed next. I’m determined that you’re going to have a terrible name.”
Jack focused his gaze on his needlework. “What do you have against names that start with G?” he asked her. “And do you walk around naked all the time?”
“Clothes are too loud,” Ava said, and flopped onto the couch on her stomach in her underwear and T-shirt, facing away from him.
“Well, if you’re done, we can talk about what else I can teach you,” Jack said, ignoring that particular baffling comment.
“Shooting, like we talked about, but you need more self-defense skills, and I can teach you some. We’ll work on some basics of striking today, since we’ll need to lie low a few days, and—”
“I know how to hit a man, Jack,” Ava said. “And I’m frankly offended you don’t think I do.”
Jack opened his mouth to say he had seen her in that warehouse, but—she had hit the man who was holding her hostage.
And she’d hit Cale hard enough that he’d still had a bruise the next day when he did a pitiful TV interview to talk about how he was strong despite how many challenges he had faced—challenges like being a billionaire.
“All right,” he said. “Have you done martial arts?”
“Kind of?” Ava said. “I watched a lot of WWE.”
At his look, she burst out laughing, so loudly she snorted halfway through and clapped her hand over her nose and mouth. It was frighteningly precious, and if Jack didn’t look away, she’d see how he felt about it, right there on his face.
“I’m fucking with you, Jack,” Ava crowed. “I know WWE isn’t the place to learn how to fight. That’s where you learn how to perform. I’ve boxed for a few years. I know how to hit.”
“Good,” Jack said. “Do you know how to throw a man?”
“Does it have to be a man?”
“You can throw anyone you want, Ava, but you asked me to teach you some skills. Some of these could save your life.”
“Who says I want it saved?” Ava turned her head and looked at him over her shoulder.
“I do.” Jack heard the change in his voice before he really knew he intended to make it—the drop, the growl, the sound that made her body respond . . . well, like that.
He could see the shiver pass through her, see the blush creeping up her neck, and he moved his needle faster. Focus on that, O’Sullivan, he told himself firmly. Not on the way her tits bounced while she squirmed at the change in your voice.
“You’re so bossy,” Ava said. “But I’m still wearing the bossy shirt.” She looked down, tugging at the hem of her shirt. “Oh, never mind, it’s the stupid corgi one. I don’t really get why people are obsessed with corgi butts, by the way.”
“Ava.”
“For the love of God, let’s not do the Ava–Jack game again,” Ava said. “Honestly, even I’m sick of it, so you’re going to have to learn to stop saying my name like that.”
“Do you want me to teach you or not?” Jack asked. “Because you brought it up.”
A new realization slammed into him, one that took his breath away.
If Jack didn’t take the hit on Ava, his client could very well hire somebody else. And she might need these skills to survive this—not just the police and the private security team after her, but another person like Jack. A person who could look ordinary and forgettable until the very last minute.
“You were the one who said I need it, Mister Smarty-Pants?” Ava’s voice turned mocking, a little hard, knocking him back to the reality of their little cottage. “You act like you know everything. Has anyone ever told you how insufferable that is?”
“Many people,” Jack said. “Many times.”
“Women must tell you that at least once a day,” Ava said. “And we should.”
“Not just women,” Jack said.
Ava rolled over and sat up. “Oh,” she said. “Really? I wouldn’t have pegged you—ha ha, get it?—as a bisexual queen.”
“I don’t know what label I’d use,” Jack said cautiously. This was more new territory—sharing. Sharing anything, at all, with anyone. “But I know I like beautiful people.”
“Cheers to that,” Ava said.
“And I don’t think I know everything,” Jack told her. “I just—I have this one specific skill set, Ava. Which is making people hurt.”
He didn’t even mean for that one to affect her, but he could see by the way her pupils widened, the color all but disappearing, that it had. He should have guessed, based on what he had seen of her Snapchat and what he had seen of Dynamo.
“Usually I just prefer people use their skills on me,” Ava said after a moment of taut silence. “But yes.” She cleared her throat, recovering. “But yes, fine, okay. I do very much want you to teach me your moves, pretty boy.”
“You got it,” Jack said wearily. “Boss.”
Ava’s eyes lit up. “So you admit it! You agree! I’m the boss forever and always, no take-backs.” She punched him in the arm, harder than he would have guessed based on her size. When he rubbed at the spot, her eyes widened with delight. “See? I can hit.”
“I did see you try to cave in Cale Jacobson’s face,” Jack said wryly.
“So you’re going to teach me to throw,” Ava said. “Do I have to be wearing pants?”
Jack’s throat clenched strangely as he set aside his cross-stitch. He was supposed to be annoyed. Sighing at her antics, rolling his eyes at her endless stream of banter. But instead the annoyance was veering toward fondness, the eye rolls not even half-hearted.
And of all the things that could have proved dangerous to him on this job, Ava Cavalcante might be the biggest threat to him yet.