Chapter 7 #2
He touched her elbow, light, and angled his body toward the far corner of the dance floor where the crowd was thinnest, partially shielded from the main room by a cluster of tall cocktail tables and a large arrangement that someone had spent too much money on. “Dance with me.”
Her mouth pressed flat. “I was just leaving.”
No way in hell, sweetheart. “I know you were. Dance with me, anyway.”
She looked at his hand on her elbow, then at the terrace doors behind him, then back at his face. He could see her thought process. Pulling away would draw attention. Refusing loudly would draw more. Walking onto a dance floor with a man who was smiling at her would draw none at all.
She went with him.
The band had shifted into something slow.
He took her hand and settled his other palm against the curve of her hip.
The contact registered through his whole body.
Four months since he’d touched her, and his hands remembered before his brain caught up.
Everything he thought he’d put behind him was right here, alive and immediate, tangled up with what he’d just watched her do.
Her hand landed against his lapel. Light. Tense. Ready to push off.
“So,” he said. “Event planning.”
Her chin came up. “So. Standing by pillars.”
“I said I was working. That was true.”
“It was vague.”
“It was honest. Can you say the same?”
She didn’t answer.
“Because I just watched you lift a money clip out of a man’s jacket pocket in front of six witnesses, and nobody even blinked.”
She didn’t flinch. “You don’t know what you saw.”
“I know exactly what I saw. Your hand went inside his jacket and came out with something metal. Four seconds later you were casually walking away.”
“People bump into each other at parties. It happens.”
“That wasn’t a bump. That was a lift.”
Her chin tilted up. Defiant. “You’re making a lot of assumptions based on one moment across a crowded room.”
“Am I? Because I’m also thinking about Boston.
Two events, two different looks for you as to not be recognized, and both times you were reading the room in a way that had nothing to do with event planning.
” He held her gaze. “The layout and the lighting. That’s what you told me.
That you were scoping them out for a client. ”
She said nothing.
“There was no client. There was no event-planning job. You were doing exactly what you did tonight, and I was too busy being charmed to see it.”
Something flickered across her face. He couldn’t tell if it was guilt or irritation that he’d put it together.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. But the edge in her voice had dulled. The denial was thinner this time.
“I saw your hand come out of a man’s jacket with his property in it. That’s not interpretation, Fallon.”
Her jaw flexed. The use of her name had landed somewhere she didn’t like. She was quiet for a few moments looking over his shoulder, and he could feel her recalibrating, deciding how much to give him, how much to fight.
Then her gaze dropped. Not to the floor. To his ear. To the earpiece.
The color left her face as she put it together. Not slowly, not gradually. It drained, and what replaced it wasn’t defiance or calculation. It was fear.
“You’re security.” Her voice had changed. Lower, tighter, stripped of every bit of the sharp banter she’d been throwing at him. “Professional security. That’s what you meant by work.”
He didn’t deny it.
Her hand on his lapel went rigid. She was running the math—what he’d seen, what he could prove, what kind of authority was behind that earpiece and how quickly it could come down on her.
“Fallon. Look at me.”
Her eyes came back to his. Wide. Guarded. Ready to bolt.
“I’m not a cop. I’m a private contractor, and petty theft is not in the scope of my contract. I’m here to protect a specific client from a specific threat, and you’re not it. As long as you’re not anywhere near my principal, what you do in this room is not my problem.”
She searched his face. He let her. Whatever she needed to see, he held still and let her find it.
She relaxed a fraction, no longer a half second from bolting. “You should’ve told me you worked security.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Maybe you should’ve told me you were a pickpocket.” He shook his head. “Zodiac Tactical has much bigger concerns than whatever it is you’re doing. So you’re off the hook, at least with me.”
They turned on the floor. The band played. Neither of them spoke for a few bars, and the silence was different now—less confrontation, more negotiation. Two people deciding what came next.
“So, security. What is it you protect people from?” she asked. “Poorly executed bumps at parties?”
“Threats. Real ones. The kind that come with documentation and law enforcement involvement.”
“Sounds dramatic.”
“Says the woman with someone else’s money clip in her pocket.”
Her mouth twitched. She fought it, but he caught it. “Allegedly.”
“I have very good eyes.”
“You have very selective eyes. You missed every red flag in Boston.”
The mention of Boston landed between them like a coin tossed on a table. Neither of them picked it up.
“Maybe I wasn’t looking for red flags,” he said.
“Maybe you should have been.”
“Probably.” He turned her, slow, and his thumb traced the curve of her hip without permission from the rest of his brain. “Would it have made a difference?”
“To what?”
He didn’t answer that. She didn’t press. The band shifted into something with more warmth, and he could feel the tension in her body changing—not leaving, but loosening. Settling into something that wasn’t fight or flight.
“Zodiac Tactical, huh?” she said, trying the name out. “Sounds like a comic book.”
“I’ll pass your feedback along to the founder.”
“You should. It’s terrible.” She tilted her head. “So you’re what—private military? Mercenary? Professional babysitter for rich people?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s three answers. Pick the one you like.”
“I don’t like any of them.”
“And yet you’re still dancing with me.”
Her fingers shifted against his lapel. Not pulling away. Adjusting. Settling. “So why aren’t you out there babysitting your rich person right now?”
“My team has the principal covered.”
“Your team.” She said it like she was cataloging a new piece of information. “How many?”
“Enough.”
“And they don’t need you?”
“They always need me. I’m delightful.”
That one cracked her. A real smile—not the performed laugh he’d watched her give the man in the gray suit from across the room. This was smaller, half-caught between her teeth, and it changed her whole face.
“There it is,” he said.
“There’s what?”
“That. The smile. The real thing. Not the one you use for…work.”
The amusement faded, but not all the way. Something stayed in her eyes. “You think you know the difference?”
“I know the difference.”
She held his gaze for a beat. He watched her decide not to argue the point. “What about you? Is this who you actually are, or is this the charm you put on with the tuxedo?”
“I don’t dance with clients.”
“Just pickpockets.”
“Alleged pickpockets.”
Her mouth curved again. Wider this time.
They were closer than when they’d started.
He could feel the warmth of her through the fabric of her dress, could feel the way her breathing had slowed, could feel her hand softening against his chest. The band played, and the crowd moved around them, and the room full of strangers had nothing to do with anything happening in this corner of the dance floor.
“I’m going to assume you won’t tell me why you do this,” he said. “Rather than actual event planning or something.”
“No.”
“And if I asked nicely?”
“You’d still get no.”
“Fair enough.” He raised his eyebrow again. “I’m not going to tell you what Zodiac does, either.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You asked three different ways in the last two minutes.”
“That was conversation.”
“That was reconnaissance.”
Her eyes flashed. Caught. “Fine. We’re both keeping secrets. At least we’re honest about that.”
Something passed between them. A charge, a recognition, the particular electricity of two people who understood exactly what the other was doing and couldn’t stop doing it themselves.
His hand was on her hip, and her hand was on his chest, and Boston was right there in every point of contact, unspoken and undeniable.
“You know, you’re not very good at your job. I spotted you from thirty feet away,” he said, “someone else could have done so, too.”
“Oh really?” She stepped slightly closer, moving her hand up his chest, across his shoulder and down his bicep.
His brain went close to short circuiting.
Fuck, he wished they weren’t surrounded by a room full of people.
“You say I’m not very good at my job, yet you’re the one out here dancing when you’re on the clock. ”
His earpiece crackled before he could respond.
“Command, this is Zone Three. Camera feed on the north terrace just dropped. I’ve got a blind spot covering the restricted corridor and the secondary exit. Need you to assess.”
Isaac’s hand stilled against Fallon’s hip. Real work. Real responsibility. A client who was paying Zodiac to keep him alive, and Isaac was, in fact, on a dance floor with a woman who’d just robbed someone in the same room.
“On my way.” He touched his earpiece to respond. “Primary, tighten up on the package until I get eyes on the corridor.”
“Copy.”
He looked at Fallon. She’d heard enough to understand. Her expression had shifted—something behind those eyes that he couldn’t read.
“Go,” she said. “Do your job.”
“This conversation isn’t over.”
“Sounds like it is. Shame, since this has been the most interesting part of my evening.”
His too. His whole fucking month.
He held her gaze for one more second. Then he released her hip, stepped back, and turned toward the north corridor.
He made it six steps before he glanced at his wrist to check the time so he’d be able to note it in his report.
His watch was gone.
The leather band, the weight of it, the familiar pressure against his wrist bone. Gone. He’d been wearing it ten seconds ago. He’d been wearing it while he was holding her. Always had it when he was on the job.
Goddamn it. He turned around.
Fallon was standing near the terrace doors, fifteen feet away. She held up his watch between two fingers, the face catching the light. That red dress, those eyes, and his watch dangling from her hand.
She held his gaze across the room. One long, charged second.
Then she dropped it into her clutch, turned, and walked through the doors into the night.
Isaac stood in the middle of the room with an empty wrist and a feeling in his chest that had no clean name. Irritation. Admiration. The weight of a woman who kept leaving him and kept making him want to follow.
He turned and headed for the north corridor. He had a client to protect.
But his mind was already running the angles. Already mapping the pattern. Calculating how long it would take to find a woman who didn’t want to be found.
He was going to find her.
The game was on.