Falling for My Sister’s Heartkeeper (After the Vows #3)

Chapter One

THERE'S A RIGHT WAY to end a fourteen-hour double, and I'm currently living the other one.

The right way has a bus in it. A couch. And the sad triumphant half of a sandwich I've been thinking about since noon.

The wrong way has two men in it, an alley, and the dawning understanding that the twenty dollars in my pocket is about to become their twenty dollars.

"Hand it over, sweetheart."

A smart girl would know how to pick her battles, but since this smart girl (meaning me, duh) is also broke...

"So, here's the thing—" My shoulder blades find brick. "I'd genuinely love to. But this twenty and I've just been through a lot together, emotionally—"

"Now."

A smarter girl would start screaming here. Then again, a smarter girl wouldn't have taken the wrong way in the first place. She would have known that the shortcut behind the noodle place turns into a shortcut to death after dark. But...whatever.

I can't turn back time, but I can scream.

And so I open my mouth...and only get exactly one syllable out.

Aaaah!

And then one of them is just...gone.

Not gone-gone.

Gone as in a hand closes over the back of his jacket and lifts him out of my personal space the way you'd pick a stray hair off a sweater. The second guy lasts a little longer. But not much.

When it's over, there's a man standing between me and the street, and he's not even out of breath. Whoa.

Two grown men, gone, and my rescuer hasn't even fixed his cuffs, and he's...um...how do I put this?

It's not my first time to see a handsome guy, but this man...is unlike anyone I've seen. He's tall and broad, his suit fits him better than anything has a right to, and his face is the kind that makes me forget that I was almost robbed—

"You're hurt."

—until he says that.

I'm hurt. Or so he says. I should probably focus on that, but my brain isn't working at the moment, with his voice going straight to the backs of my knees, low and even and expensive, the kind of voice that's never once had to ask for anything twice and knows it.

And here's the truly unfair part. It isn't just the face, or the shoulders, or the suit. What makes my heart beat dangerously fast is his calmness. It's not Zen-like, but more like mafia-boss-cool, and no, I'm not in favor of syndicated crime, but you get what I'm saying, right? Right?

So anyway, this rescuer of mine...

He's that kind of cool, with how he took two men apart without mussing his hair, and now he's watching me like violence is something he keeps in a drawer and only takes out when it would be rude not to.

I have met exactly zero men who could do that, and maybe that's why my borrowed heart chooses this exact moment to remind me it's in there.

Slow down, heart!

I need to calm down. It's not good for me to be excited like this. I need a distraction like...oh, right, he did say I was hurt earlier, didn't he?

I check my elbow, and...oh. I see it now. A scrape. But honestly? I've had worse from a spatula.

"I'm fine," I tell him. "This is nothing.

You should see the other twenty." I'm not expecting him to laugh at anything, but he doesn't even crack a smile, and his too-handsome face remains stoic.

He really should lighten up. Instead of looking at me like I'm a math problem he didn't agree to solve, he should...

"Have dinner with me."

The words are out before I even realize what I'm saying, but there's thankfully no need to blush since all he does is stare at me like he doesn't speak English.

"As a thank you," I say quickly.

He's still silent, so now I'm thinking he's terribly overwhelmed by my generosity.

"Because you saved my life," I add, just in case he needs clarification. "That's basically a documented obligation. You save me. I have to feed you. It's in the—" I wave a hand. "It's in the rules."

"And whose rules would that be?" One dark brow climbs a fraction, the most expression he's spent since he strolled in and rearranged my whole evening.

"Mine, of course, so there's no sense in arguing—" I'm already walking as I say this, not wanting to give him a chance to refuse.

It's a strategy that's worked for me eight times out of a possible nine hundred, but that doesn't mean I have to give up.

In my book, I just need to keep trying, and so that's what I'm doing here.

"Come on, office boy. My treat."

I'm trying to be his friend, that's all.

"I know a place with the kind of dumplings that fix things."

The words come out breezy even as my chest tightens in sudden panic because...what if he doesn't follow?

What do I do then?

Drag him?

Get down on my knees and beg?

I don't even know why I care, but—oh! He's actually following behind me, and after that, well...

The good news: he lets me treat him to dinner.

The bad news: he's terrible at small talk.

Or maybe he just doesn't like my company but he's too polite to let me know?

He answers every question I ask of him, sure, but he does so with as few words as the English language will legally allow, and he watches me eat like I'm someone defusing a bomb badly.

"So what do you do?" I ask him, mouth full of dumpling.

"Not something I'm interested in disclosing."

Hm. What kind of job gives a man a vocabulary that has him using 'disclosure' in casual conversation? Is he in law enforcement, maybe? But off duty? It's possible, considering how he didn't even hesitate coming to my rescue.

"What about your name? Or is that something you can't disclose either?"

"Won't, not can't." He corrects me without raising his voice, but the corner of his mouth also moves at the same time. Not exactly a smile, but it's something, and well, that tells me everything.

Like I said: I'm smart, but broke, and so now I'm completely convinced I got it right the first time.

A man who doesn't say much, doesn't smile much, and doesn't want to even disclose his name?

Law enforcement, for sure. But undercover, not off duty, hence all the secrecy, and since I'm smart enough not to get in the way of his work...

"I'll just call you Mr. H then," I say cheerfully.

"Please don't."

"Do you want to know why?"

"No."

"H for hot—"

I hold up a finger as I say this. "Honorable—"

Second finger up, and I let the third one hang there a second before finishing with a flourish—

"And thirdly, hers."

The look on his handsome face is priceless.

"But by that I really mean 'mine', just in case I'm not being clear enough."

I say this with a laugh because obviously, I'm (half) joking, but hey, if he wants to be mine, who am I to say no?

When we're done with dinner, I ask if he can walk me home, and while he only grunts in response, low and put-upon, he also falls into step beside me like the hottest bodyguard ever, so that's a yes in my book.

He doesn't talk much as we walk. He doesn't have to.

Without being asked, he takes the street side, one whole head above the crowd, and every man who looks at me twice abruptly discovers urgent business in the opposite direction.

Being this close to him, with my shoulder accidentally brushing against his arm, and his fingers cupping my elbow when I almost trip at one point—

It's all terribly exciting, and it really is terrible unfortunately, for someone like me whose borrowed heart comes from a stranger I'll never get to thank.

My building is loud with other people's dinners, and since I've never been the type to keep things nice and orderly inside my bag, it takes a while to find my key.

"I'm so sorry..."

I turn around to face him after unlocking my door, and I'm looking at him, hoping, waiting, and holding my breath—

Please, please, please.

I'm sure he knows what I'm waiting for—

"Don't make a habit of being stupid." It comes out rougher than anything else he's said all night, like the words snagged on something on the way out. "No job is worth getting killed." But that's all Mr. H says before walking away.

MAXIMO GOT TWO BLOCKS before he let himself stop.

What the hell had just happened?

He'd come back to Los Angeles for one reason, and it hadn't been this.

The plan had been simple. Fly in, drive, park across a street he'd memorized from a file he wasn't supposed to have. Watch her come out of whatever late shift she was working. Confirm with his own eyes that this girl was walking, and breathing, and alive.

Jassy Beale.

The girl he knew he should stay away from, but instead he had succumbed to the desire to see how she was doing.

And that was all he truly wanted, the only thing he had flown six thousand miles for.

He simply wanted to see how she was. Who she was. And then leave, and never let her know a man named Maximo existed.

But then he saw her about to get mugged, and that was it.

The rest of his plan no longer applied.

Because the girl who wasn't supposed to know he existed?

Jassy hadn't hesitated to let him know she found him hot, honorable, and hers.

Worse, she had somehow gotten her way in treating him to dinner, and equally confounding was why Maximo had let her get away with giving him a name like what she said was true.

That she was his.

When that could never be...and not just because of how Jassy reminded him of a nineteen-year-old girl whose eyes sparkled just like hers, sometimes out of mischief, other times out of joy. He could never belong to Jassy, and their paths should never have crossed like this.

Jassy was the one girl in this world he was forbidden to want because beating behind her chest...was his sister's heart.