9. Eva #2
He looks at his knuckles. “Among other things.”
“Among other things.” I stare at him. “Who taught you to fight?”
“My brothers.”
“Your brothers,” I repeat.
The ones he won’t tell me about. The ones whose last name I don’t know. The ones who apparently taught the cereal-eating, metal-listening, glasses-wearing computer genius how to throw a punch hard enough to split his knuckles.
“We should go inside,” he says. “Because I’m sure you didn’t come here to discuss my workout routine.”
I scrape a hand down the front of my face, my brain still a little scrambled. “No, I came here because we have a problem.” I follow him up the stairs, trying very hard not to look at the way his shoulders flex when he climbs.
Trying and failing.
“Dmitri knows about Sal’s debt,” I say.
He stops on the landing and turns. “What did he say?”
“I met him today. He asked about Sal, like always. And then he said he heard business was good, that there was ‘no more trouble with the neighbors.’ With a smile. That fucking smile, Wolfe. The one that means he’s holding a knife behind his back, ready to impale me with it.”
His jaw tightens, his expression shifting from its typical analytical stillness to something harder. Something that matches the split knuckles.
“Come inside,” he says, glancing up and down the block.
His apartment smells like sweat and dryer sheets and something uniquely him. And my God, I cannot get enough of it.
And while I’m almost about to swoon, very much against my will, he peels off the tank top. I have to grit my teeth to keep my jaw from hitting the floor. Abs. Like, holy shit abs. More cuts of muscle. Pecs.
Whaaat?
I tear my eyes away…and it’s fucking hard…as Wolfe grabs a shirt from his bedroom. He walks out a few minutes later with it half on. His hands are bandaged, too. Led Zeppelin. I watch his arms and torso disappear into the fabric and record every single thing I just saw.
And I already know those images will be on loop in my mind tonight, no doubt keeping me awake for hours.
But enough of that. I’m here for business. Period.
“He asked for a person’s calendar this time,” I say, dropping in the chair by his desk. “Not just company data. He wants to know where a specific person is going to be for the next two weeks.”
His thumb starts tapping. “He’s targeting someone.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Who?”
“Vincent Renaldi.”
His fingers stop. Not in a dramatic freeze kind of way. It’s just a pause, half a second where his hands hover over the keys before they start moving again, faster than before.
“You know him,” I say.
“I know the name.”
“And?”
“And I need to look into it before I say anything else.”
“Wolfe—”
“Eva. Give me a day.”
He sits down and starts pulling data. I lean forward in my chair to look at his screen.
Our shoulders are about four inches apart.
I am extremely aware of those four inches.
I am aware that he smells like sweat and soap and that the combination is doing things to my brain that are not helpful right now.
His forearm is right there. The scar. I could reach out and touch it.
I don’t.
“The calendar request changes things,” he says. “Data collection is preparation. Tracking a person’s movements is operational. He’s getting ready to do something specific to someone specific.”
“How long do we have?”
“I don’t know. But the timeline is accelerating.”
We work for two hours. He connects the Ashford and Crane data to the Meridian Capital and Hargrove files. Three jobs, three companies, one network. The pattern is clear now. Dmitri isn’t just gathering leverage. He’s building a target package on specific people inside specific organizations.
To do what, I have no freaking idea. But knowing Dmitri and his reputation, it can’t be good.
I should be focused on the data. I am focused on the data.
But I’m also focused on the way Wolfe’s hands fly over the keyboard.
Those same hands that were red and raw twenty minutes ago and are now patched up.
The same hand that caught my wrist two days ago and held my pulse under his thumb for three seconds.
The wrist grab is still in my body. Not the anger. That faded. What’s left is the heat of his grip, the pressure of his thumb, the way everything went silent in my head for those three seconds like the whole world narrowed down to the place where his skin touched mine.
I didn’t like it. I didn’t want it. I told him never to do it again.
But my wrist remembers. And now I’ve seen his knuckles and his scars and his Photoshop-worthy pecs and abs, and the man I’ve been calling Clark Kent just got a hell of a lot more complicated.
“You’re staring again,” he says without looking up.
“I’m thinking.”
“About what?”
“About how many things you’re not telling me.”
He stops typing and looks at me with ice blue eyes that send a rush of warmth into my core.
“A lot,” he says. “I’m not telling you a lot of things.”
“At least you’re honest about being dishonest.”
“I’m trying.”
“That’s not as comforting as you think it is.”
“I know.”
We look at each other. Four inches between our shoulders. His thumb stops tapping. My wrist tingles, and I hate it.
“I should go,” I say, pushing back the chair, the legs scraping against the cheap linoleum floor.
“Yeah.”
I don’t move. He doesn’t move.
“Wolfe.”
“Yeah.”
“The debt. The forty-two-thousand dollars.”
“Yeah.” His eyes never move from my face.
“Thank you,” I murmur.
He doesn’t say you’re welcome. He doesn’t say it was nothing. He just looks at me with that deep-set gaze that see everything and says, “Sal shouldn’t have to carry that.”
“No,” I say. “He shouldn’t.”
I stand up and walk fast toward the door. I stop with my hand on the handle and glance at him over my shoulder.
“The knuckles,” I say. “And the scars. And the brothers who taught you to fight.”
“What about them?”
I shake my head. “You’re not who I thought you were.”
“Is that good or bad?”
Biting down on my lower lip, I stare at him before answering. “I haven’t decided yet.”
Then I pull open the door and walk out of his apartment, an unsteady breath quaking my chest. I hurry to my building through streets that are starting to feel familiar in a way that makes me nervous. I know the cracks in the sidewalk. I know which streetlights need replacement bulbs.
I’m building a life in this neighborhood. A careful, temporary life that includes my brother’s restaurant, a stranger’s apartment, and the space between them where I’m becoming someone I don’t recognize.
Someone who notices a man’s muscular forearms. Someone who can still feel his grip on her wrist two days later. Someone who sat four inches from a man she doesn’t fully trust and didn’t move away.
I tell myself it’s the job.
But my hands are trembling the same way they do after I see Dmitri.
Except this time it’s not from fear.
And that’s so much worse.