Chapter Five
Leighton
“Holden, are you home?”
I hear him answer me from the bathroom, at the same time I hear the water in the shower.
Good, that lets me know I have a couple of minutes before he gets done.
Quickly, I take the few bags I have, put them on the counter, and then head back to the bedroom to change into a tank top and a pair of shorts.
When I bend over, the shorts almost show the curve of my ass – I know because I’ve looked.
Fair? Probably not, but I’m learning as a woman you have to sometimes play the game to get what you want.
If I’m honest with myself, I wear these clothes because I want Holden to notice me, yet I’m not sure he does.
“How does hamburgers on the grill sound to you?” I ask, bending over to get the lettuce, tomato, and cheese out of the bottom of our fridge.
“Sounds good. I can grill them for us as long as you take care of the sides.”
His voice surprises me, closer than I anticipated it would be.
It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end and goosebumps to appear all over my body, in the most pleasurable of ways.
Holden’s voice is one of the sexiest things about him.
I love when he calls me on the phone instead of texting me.
It’s a privacy I enjoy, a little thrill no one else knows I get except me.
Regardless of whether it’s on the phone or not, I love talking to him and the intelligent conversations we have with one another.
Purposely, I shake my ass before lifting up from my bent-over position.
Making a bit of a show of it, I place the stuff I got out of the fridge onto the counter.
That’s when I get my first good look at him.
A dark bruise covers almost his entire pec, and I immediately get a sinking feeling in my stomach.
It’s hard to discern from the tattoos he has covering his body, but I can make it out, looking like a bullseye, right over his heart.
I hope my family had nothing to do with this.
I’ll never forgive myself if they have. “Oh my God, Holden! What happened to your chest?”
He rubs his hand across his pec, drawing attention not only to the already purpling bruise, but the solid strength there.
He grimaces slightly, but I don’t know if it’s from the movement or the pressure he puts on the skin.
Sometimes when I’m tired of fighting the fact I’m attracted to this man, I let myself rest against his bare skin, and knowing he’s hurt right now hurts me.
Reaching for the beer I put on the counter, he pops the seal with his big hand.
“I’m okay,” he assures me, taking a drink of one of the Coronas I picked up at the store. “A bullet got me, but my vest stopped it – the exact way it’s supposed to. It did its job, just like I did mine.”
I freeze, stop everything I’m doing and look at him.
How can he be so collected and calm about this?
Obviously if there hadn’t been a vest there, he would have taken a bullet to the chest. He very well could have died.
I don’t know why, but I’ve never thought of it that way before, never imagined what he did had him truly in danger.
I guess in my mind, I thought he sent other people out instead of himself, but that’s not really Holden Thompson, is it?
That’s not the kind of man he is. “So, you got shot at?” I ask carefully.
“Kinda part of what I do, sweetheart.” He takes a drink of the beer and levels me with a gaze, the side of his mouth tilting up.
The gaze is enough to stop my heart, the intensity in his eyes cause butterflies in my stomach, something I’ve never felt before. In the blink of an eye, I realize how much I’ve come to count on that gaze, and something else hits me like a ton of bricks.
Today is the day I truly realize just how dangerous Holden’s job really is.