Chapter 7 #2
He did. “Absolutely,” he teased back. “Bossing around a stubborn woman is a dream come true for me.”
She laughed—that little chuckle that made him want to see her face. Through the dark, he could make out the outline. His imagination did the rest.
And then that same imagination started going into dangerous territory, his memory supplying all the skin that her skimpy tank top and shorts revealed.
But then his phone buzzed, saving him from letting Sutton’s brown eyes and slender body undo him here in the dark.
He sat up, checked the screen. Garrett. He answered. “Go.”
“The Iron Rose was broken into. The parlor was ransacked—stations overturned, walls stripped, the flash art torn down. Every drawer was emptied. Every storage space searched. Whoever did it wasn’t subtle.”
Damn it. He rubbed his tired eyes. “Anyone hurt?”
“Dom Salazar. It was after hours and looks like he walked in and surprised whoever it was. He pulled a gun; they fought back.”
Sebastian closed his eyes. Fuck. “How bad?”
“Blunt force trauma to the head. He’s at the hospital. They put him on life support an hour ago.”
Sutton was up again, flicking on the light. “What is it? What happened?”
Sebastian ran a hand over his face. Dom had nothing to do with any of this except the bad luck of employing Sutton.
“I’ll inform her,” Sebastian said.
She launched out of the bed. “Inform me of what?”
“Copy.” Garrett paused. “Claire believes they were looking for anything tied to Penn, like the sketchbooks, not specifically hunting for Sutton. She thinks you might have interrupted their search at the apartment, and they tried the parlor on a whim.”
“My guess, too.”
Sutton squatted in front of him, eyes wide with panic. He ended the call.
She grabbed the phone out of his hand, as if daring him to ignore her any further. “What. Happened.”
He told her, straight up. No padding it. He’d never been good with skirting the truth.
Her hand went to her mouth. The phone hit the floor. Her eyes filled with tears, and she blinked hard, trying to keep them from falling. They spilled anyway.
She sat back. Just collapsed onto the floor, her legs splaying out. One of them bumped his. “This is because of me.” Her voice cracked. “They came looking for me, didn’t they? Dom is nearly dead because of me.”
“Blaming yourself won’t do any good. The way the place was ransacked, it looks like they were after Penn’s sketchbooks or anything of his that might be tied to them. They weren’t after you or Dom. Dom surprised them. Looks like he pulled a weapon, forcing them to retaliate.”
“Don’t tell me this isn’t my fault. I should have warned him. He wouldn’t be clinging to life if—”
“This isn’t your fault.” Sebastian cut in.
He knew the blame game all too well, but his sharpness wasn’t aimed at her.
It was aimed at himself. “It’s mine. I should have put security on the parlor.
I should have had someone watching it from the moment we brought you to the compound.
I identified the threat, and I didn’t cover it. That’s on me.”
Her forehead creased. “You didn’t do this—”
“Neither did you.” He sat forward, elbows on his knees, hands locked together.
The anger pulsed in his chest, hot and directionless.
She was only inches from him, and he wanted to take her hands to reassure her.
He didn’t. “The person who broke into that parlor did it. The organization that sent them is behind it. Not you. Not me. Them. But I should have predicted it. I should have—”
“Because it’s your job.”
He nodded.
The tears were still on her face, and he desperately wanted to wipe them away. “Do you have some kind of crystal ball?”
He clenched his jaw. “No, but I’ve had training and experience.”
“You can read minds, then.”
He gave her a look.
She brushed at her damp cheeks. “I’m just saying—neither of us is psychic, right?”
“Once I knew they’d been in your apartment, I should have suspected they might go to the parlor.”
She fell silent. In agreement? In frustration? He couldn’t tell. She shook her head and stared at nothing. “Poor Dom.”
He couldn’t give himself the full thirty seconds to get his emotions under control, but he did take two deep breaths. “I’m sorry.”
She reached out, took one of his hands. “Me, too.”
Her fingers were strong, steady. He let her thread them through his, reveling in her touch in a way that shocked him. “It’s not your—”
She squeezed his fingers hard. “If you get to blame yourself, I get to blame myself. It’s only fair that we both carry this burden.”
A burden layered on the one they already shared.
Sebastian squeezed her hand. “All right. We’ll share the blame.”
She scooted around so her back was to the wall without letting go of his hand. He held his breath, wondering when she would. No matter when, it would come too soon.
And didn’t that scare the hell out of him.
“Dom’s strong,” she said, like she was trying to reassure herself. “He survived the Navy. He survived a divorce and a bad decade after opening the tattoo parlor on the worst block in Blackridge. He’s strong.”
Sebastian didn’t know him except in passing, but he suspected she was right. “He is.”
She wiped her face with the back of her hand and drew a shaky breath. “I want to see him.”
“Too dangerous. The assassin may have hurt him exactly for that purpose—to draw you out.”
Her gaze was fierce as it swung to him. “You’re my bodyguard, right? You’ll protect me, just like you did Ginger and the others when you were in the Service.”
He wanted to argue that it wasn’t the same. The argument would be pointless and untrue. “The safest place for you is here.”
“I know. But what, I’m supposed to live here indefinitely?
Or until this asshole decides to give up?
I’m not allowed to have a life anymore? Not go see the one person in this world that took a chance on me and gave me a fresh start?
” She shook her head again, adamant this time.
“No. You’re taking me to see Dom, and then we’re going to clean up the parlor so it’s not a disaster when he comes home. ”
If he comes home. Sebastian didn’t hold out much hope. He stared at their intertwined fingers. “You admitted you put yourself in danger going to your apartment. This is worse.”
“We’ll be at the hospital. A place full of people, security, and cameras. No one’s going to attack me there.”
It was safer than her apartment had been, but he couldn’t justify it. “We’ll figure it out. Not tonight, but we’ll figure something out, okay?”
She nodded, blowing out a sigh and slumping back against the wall again. The distance between them had shrunk, not only physically, but in other ways now, too.
Sleep wouldn’t come for him, but eventually, her eyelids drooped. Her head landed on his shoulder.
He didn’t move, the blanket bunched beneath him. He snuck glances at her face, her legs, her tatts. His imagination took over again, and it was all he could do not to trace one of his fingers over her thigh tattoo, her shoulder. To wake her up and kiss her.
Get a grip. She was alone and scared; that was the only reason she was sitting here next to him. Underneath it all, she hated him, and always would. He couldn’t blame her—how could she ever look at him as anything but her brother’s killer?
And the last thing he needed was a complication like her in his life. He dated only briefly a few years ago. No one serious. No matter who he went out with, he always wondered in the back of his mind if they really liked him or the image the media had created after the assassination attempt.
Forcing himself to think through the tactical failures he’d made in order to keep himself distracted from Sutton’s body, he pinned his gaze on the wall across from them.
Dom unprotected, Iron Rose unsecured, the assumption that removing Sutton from the apartment removed the threat from her orbit.
Sloppy. The kind of thinking that got people hurt.
And Dom had paid the price.
Sutton shifted. When he glanced down, her eyes were open. Their hands were still loosely linked. She watched him with unguarded boldness and began tracing his hand with a finger.
He tried not to visibly react to her soft touch, but he sucked in an audible breath before he could control it.
She raised her head, holding his gaze. “Tell me about your family,” she said quietly.
Once again, she surprised him. He wanted to get lost in her eyes, absorb the feeling of her finger tracing over his hand. For a moment, his brain wouldn’t shift gears—all he could think about were her full lips so close to his.
“Is that topic off limits?” she asked when his answer didn’t come immediately.
He cleared his throat, dragged his focus from her mouth, and felt the ripples of vulnerability move outward through territory he’d spent years fencing off. “Not much to tell.”
“Come on. Everyone has a story.”
He exhaled, a shiver passing through him as she continued to torture him with her finger that now drifted to his exposed forearm.
“I’m from Greenwich, Connecticut,” he said, his voice sounding rough to his own ears.
“Old money. My grandfather was a senator. My father runs a hedge fund. My mother chairs charitable foundations and hosts galas where everyone pretends to care about the same causes. My sister Charlotte went to Princeton, then Harvard Law, then a corner office at a firm. She married an investment banker. They have two kids.”
He took a breath, blew it out. “My mother called when you were in the shower.” The admission slipped out before he’d decided to make it.
He blamed the dark and the warmth of her hand on his forearm.
“First time in months. She wanted to tell me there are reporters parked outside their gate in Greenwich.”
Sutton’s finger paused on his skin. “Not because she’s worried about you?”
“She doesn’t worry about anyone. She wanted to know if I’d consider making a statement. To manage the narrative.”