6. Julian
Julian
Am I a bastard if I liked having her at my mercy?
Yeah. I am.
After what she did to us, after five months of wondering whether she ever loved me the way I loved her, watching her unable to run away from me is giving me a sick satisfaction that I don’t want to examine too closely.
Jasper winds between my ankles, loudly demanding affection as if I am not currently having a moral crisis. I scoop him up and scratch beneath his chin.
“You need to tell your mom to stop being mad at me,” I say.
Jasper gives me one slow blink that feels deeply judgmental, then launches himself out of my arms. Now I feel bad trying to use his relationship with his mom so that she won’t be angry.
Fuck, Ettie being this close and not under me is making me lose it.
No word from Elliot’s bitch ass. I shouldn’t be surprised. It isn’t like we are exactly friends. We were barely able to get our woman out before Fuller’s men could reach her. Though Elliot hasn’t admitted that he loves her, he must. Men don’t ruin their careers for women they merely enjoy fucking.
I cringe at the our.
Seems to be working out for Marge though. I don’t know how she handles her merry band of gangsters, but she’s happy.
The cabin has a cramped gym tucked into the garage, and I retreat there before the urge to break down Lee’s door and demand another fight becomes impossible to ignore. Fury and helplessness scrape beneath my skin. It needs somewhere to go. The punching bag is as good of a place as any.
How can I help Ettie out of this mess? I could tell my practice to go to hell, empty one of my offshore accounts, and disappear with her before Fuller realizes which direction we ran.
Somewhere in the mountains, maybe? We could go somewhere with no bureau, no Project Vine that took everything she loves away, and definitely no Elliot fucking Ryker.
She would never hide, and I would have to drug her all the time. Then she would stay mad at me. That won’t work.
My uncle has been training me to take over his contracts.
He’s a surgeon as well, only he doesn’t work at a hospital.
He owns a private clinic and provides in-home care to patients who can’t risk leaving their names on hospital records.
His practice is off the books, for criminals, and other wealthy people who obtain our services.
He built an empire, and he’s training me to take over.
It’s set me up with powerful players. I only need to figure out who I can use to help my Ettie.
My knuckles tighten around the barbells, and I lift with gritted teeth.
I wish she would tell me about Emily. And about the man she killed. But she shut me out.
When I found out about Elliot, I wanted to kill them both. Then fuck her into oblivion until she admitted I still matter to her. Yet here I am, standing in a garage in the middle of nowhere, waiting for any scrap of her love she is willing to throw my way.
I’ll love her enough for both of us.
The weights drop to the rubber mat with a hard clank. I cross the small space to the punching bag. My gloves are already waiting on the bench.
I slam a short jab into the heavy bag, then another.
The steady rhythm of leather meeting fist helps drown out the noise in my head.
At least if I exhaust myself, sleep might come easier tonight.
Maybe my thoughts will stop looping endlessly on Ettie—the first kiss, the first time I sank into her, the first moment I knew I loved her.
The first time I saw her seems like a lifetime ago, yet the memory remains fresh.
“Julian, take the bullet out of Keeper,” my uncle says, jerking his chin toward the bleeding man seated at the far end of the warehouse.
My uncle works on numbing the area around a throwing star protruding from his patient’s back.
I heard them call him Calum. A third man stands with his hands in his pockets and leans against the wall.
His gaze is cold and deadly. He stares in silence, assessing our work. I try to ignore the unnerving glare.
Keeper shifts in the chair and offers me the back of his arm. A bullet is lodged in the upper muscle.
“Doesn’t look to have hit anything vital. I’ll remove it, then we’ll run a quick scan to check for fragments.”
The man grunts a response, and I start working. I’ve numbed the site, much to his annoyance. He ordered me to just pull it out. Apparently, being shot is acceptable, but waiting three minutes for lidocaine is where he draws the line.
I line up the tools and prepare to pack the wound once the bullet is removed.
A tornado of blonde stomps in the warehouse, furious and beautiful as hell.
“Cal. I’m going to murder you,” she seethes and looks over my uncle’s shoulder, watching him work on the weapon removal.
“Lee. This is only my second time using throwing stars. And Keep got the job done, didn’t he?”
“You could have gotten caught. Keeper was shot. This didn’t go as planned.” Her voice shifts from fury to raw concern the moment she sees how deeply the star is embedded.
“Well, we didn’t get caught,” Calum mumbles.
Her attention lands on me, and I freeze. Her face is a perfect heart shape. Pretty gray eyes and long lashes against her creamy skin make her look like a porcelain doll. If dolls wore rage on their faces.
“Keeper. Honestly, I give you one job, and you get shot.”
She rests her hand on Keeper’s shoulder, and that gets under my skin. Jealousy hits me with enough force to overthrow all my reasonable thoughts.
“Lee, fuck off. You didn’t tell us there would be seven of them.”
Keeper hisses when I dig harder into his wound than necessary. He doesn’t get to talk to her like that.
“Seven? Shit. Well, it is a good day for the—” She stops herself from finishing that sentence. “And who are you?”
“Dr. Julian Jameson.”
“Julian is my nephew,” my uncle says. “A skilled surgeon. I wouldn’t bring anyone less than the best, Agent Leighlan.”
She nods, studying me. I can’t stop studying her right back.
The blue satin shirt tucked into her black skirt rises and falls with each quick breath, hinting at the curve of her bra.
Her waist is tiny, hips full and inviting.
Those black pumps aren’t overly tall, but they do dangerous things to my pulse.
Sexy librarian fantasies with her as the star are my new obsession.
“Pleasure to meet you,” I manage.
“Lee. Everyone calls me Lee.” She flashes a tight smile. “Okay, we can debrief later. Love you, Cal. Glad you didn’t die. Bye.”
She spins on her heel and storms out the same way she came in.
I stare after her until Keeper clears his throat loudly enough to drag my attention back to the bullet still lodged in his arm.
I drag my chair closer and return to his wound.
This would be easier in a proper operating room instead of a warehouse full of armed criminals, but this is part of the gig.
“Want me to get her number for you, Doc?” Keeper asks.
I clamp the bullet and extract it with perhaps less gentleness than medically necessary.
He winces. “Damn, Doc, I was joking. You looked like you were only seconds from throwing her over your shoulder and running out the door with her. Which would be insane, by the way.”
Whatever business these men are in clearly sharpened their instincts. Keeper is right. I’m obsessed. I’ll do whatever I can to make her mine.
It took me less than a week to realize wanting Lee and successfully approaching Lee are two very different problems.
I might be stalking her. I am officially stalking her. I pressured my uncle to give me her name. The full one: Ethal Abigail Leighlan. She didn’t strike me as an Ethal. No one calls her that anyway. They call her Lee.
And I’ve been following her, so I can “run into her,” and ask her for a date. Something tells me she would turn me down flat if I called and asked her over the phone.
Like clockwork, she emerges out of the building and gets into her car at the end of the day.
I tail her from a careful distance, never close enough for her to spot me in the rearview. I spent hours researching how to follow someone discreetly. Staying two or three cars behind to blend in with traffic should keep her from noticing me. Or at least those were the search results.
It’s really alarming what you can find on the internet. Lucky for her I’m not actually insane. Just… persistent. Though I’m sure that’s exactly what every unhinged person tells themselves.
She pulls into a coffee shop. The lot isn’t crowded, so I park farther from the entrance and kill the engine. So far, so good. I followed every instruction perfectly.
I turn off the car then step outside, shutting the door behind me with a soft click.
Cold metal touches the back of my head.
“What the fuck do you want?”
“Ettie.” I start trying to figure out how to respond so that she doesn’t think I’m a complete loser or shoot me in the head.
“Who are you?”
“Julian Jameson. We met when I was with my uncle. At the warehouse.”
She leans in. Her hair swings forward, brushing my shoulder. She doesn’t pull the gun back even an inch. Her gaze travels over me, assessing, and I have to fight the ridiculous urge to smile at how cute she is.
“Oh, hey.”
She takes a step back and lowers her gun.
I turn slowly. “Hey.”
“Well, it was great seeing you, Jay. Sorry about this.” She waves her gun in a little jazz hand motion.
“It’s Julian.”
“Right. Julian.” She tucks the gun into her enormous shoulder bag. “I thought you might be following me. Also, everyone calls me Lee.”
“I was following you,” I admit. “And I’m not everyone. I was hoping you might let me take you to dinner sometime.”
I clear my throat, waiting for her answer.
“Oh.”
The corner of her mouth curves upward.
“So you were tailing me from my office just to ask me out?”
Heat starts creeping up the back of my neck. I think my internet research gave me false confidence in my stalking abilities. I’ll have to practice. All I can do is shrug.
“Okay,” she says.
The grin she gives me has me feeling like I just won gold in the Olympics.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Dinner sounds lovely.” She adjusts the strap of her bag. “And I won’t bring this next time.” She pats the purse meaningfully.
She turns to leave then glances back over her shoulder.
“Even though you were awful at trailing me, I have complete faith you can sleuth around enough to find my number.”
I laugh.
“I’ll talk to you soon, Ettie.”
“No one’s ever called me that.” Her grin widens, bright and stunning. “I don’t hate it. I’ll be waiting for that call. This was the best meet-cute I’ve ever had.”
She waves at me over her head and goes inside the coffee shop.
I grinned the whole way home.
I wanted to make her mine. And I did. Until she wasn’t anymore.
My fists bounce off the bag with each swing. If I can hit it hard enough, I might be able to drive out the memory of her falling in love with him.