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The voice was deep. Rough. Sexy.

And blessedly welcome.

Bianca looked up. Chay was standing just behind her, looking big and imposing and beautiful.

He smiled. At least, his lips curved up at the corners, but she knew she would never forget the tightly banked fury in his eyes.

“Honey,” he said, “I know we said we’d meet outside, but that awning is the size of a bandage and the rain…”

Say something, she told herself, but what could you say when you’d needed a miracle and a miracle materialized?

Chay laughed. “Just look at you, baby. So surprised to see me that you’re speechless.”

He bent to her, wrapped his hand around the nape of her neck, tilted her face up to his and kissed her.

It was a kiss of ownership. Of possession.

Of salvation, she thought wildly as the hand holding hers fell away.

Chay raised his head and looked at Noah

“A friend of yours, honey?”

“A—a professional acquaintance.”

He nodded. Smiled again. “Baby? Why don’t you wait for me at the door?”

Once, a long time ago on the cliffs in Sicily, Bianca had almost stepped on a viper. The snake had reacted instantly; she remembered the coiled tension in its body, the reality of its cold, flat eyes.

She thought of that now, looking at Chay.

“Chay,” she said in a low voice, “don’t—”

Noah’s chair groaned in protest as he shoved back from the table. His face was a pasty white.

“It’s okay,” he said as he rose to his feet. “Actually, I was just—”

Chay grasped his shoulder. Noah squealed and sank back in his seat.

Good, Chay thought grimly, although what he really wanted was to put his fist in this skinny bastard’s face and lay him out.

He’d stood under the leaky awning, watching the scene inside Cuppa Joe’s unfold. Two minutes in, h

e knew he’d have realized the meeting was business even if Bianca hadn’t told him it was.

For openers, it was impossible to see the guy talking with her as her type. Bianca would go for some intense-looking, pipe-smoking academic nerd all turned out in tweed. This guy was wearing his pants hiked up above his waist, his white socks showed below his cuffs, and even at a distance Chay could see that his teeth needed more than a tube of toothpaste could provide.

But there was more to his assessment than that.

The body language was all wrong.

He could tell.

There was that sensing thing of his, the ability to pick up on something happening that shouldn’t be happening. Plus, the same as Tanner, the same as all STUD operatives, Chay was a sniper. A highly trained sniper.

What it added up to was that he was good, hell, he was outstanding at reading body language. That was partly how he’d known the boy on that mountaintop was a killer and, Jesus, he hadn’t wanted to think about that now.

He was focused on what was happening inside that coffee shop and what he saw was more than a meeting of strangers.