Page 28

Eight
Well,she thought, as Blue stared at her in what looked like a kind of amazement, except a lot less friendly,that was stupid.
“A date.” He said it as if he’d never heard of something so repellent. “Why?”
Everly waved a hand and told herself she felt effortless. “It isn’t thewhythat’s interesting. It’s more, you know, imagining you storming into some café for a coffee date like you were thundering into battle and ordering... I don’t know. Some nails to chew on?”
“Why can’t I have coffee like a normal person?”
“Canyou? Or does that require mission parameters and a private jet?”
She couldn’t read the look he threw at her, but she could read herself perfectly well. She was flirting with him.
She needed him to save her life and she wasflirtingwith him.
What waswrongwith her?
Blue roamed from her bedroom doorway, across the living room, and into the open-plan kitchen, and she found herself trailing after him. Very much as if this were his apartment instead of hers. But then, she couldn’t say the place really felt like hers anymore. She’d spent nearly a month here after that night, and she wasn’t sure she’d relaxed that entire time. Not once.
Not until tonight.
Well.
She wouldn’t call herselfrelaxed, exactly. But the sun was going down outside and she wasn’t sitting with her back to the wall, wide-eyed and panicked. She wasn’t listening for any and every noise that might be the men who’d hurt Rebecca, back to finish the job.
It was him, of course. Blue. The simple fact that he’d checked every room in the apartment to make sure that it was safe to be here. And now he was towering over the small galley kitchen as he rummaged through her refrigerator, as if everything were perfectly normal. Everly pressed the heel of her hand to the center of her chest and recalled how, only moments before, she’d stood outside the door in her hallway and felt as if something were crushing her.
It was gone now. He’d made her feel safe. Here, where she’d thought she might never feel safe again.
“Should we order some food?” she asked. “There’s a great pizza place down the street.”
Blue straightened, then looked at her over the open refrigerator door. “Unless you’re some kind of culinary genius who can whip up something delicious from a couple moldy old apples, three cheese sticks, and asix-pack of Diet Coke, I don’t think we really have another choice.”
“How dare you? That’s what I call a feast.”
He muttered something. Then he swung the refrigerator door shut, and it was instantly clear that Everly had let herself drift too far into the kitchen and was now standing entirely too close to him. That was the problem with this place, and galley kitchens in general. There was never any real space, just a long, narrow strip of very little floor and too many appliances, tucked on one end of the living room.
And there was even less space in her kitchen now than there usually was.
It took her longer than it should have to notice that the way Blue was looking down at her was... not exactly friendly. Again. Which didn’t make sense, because she was no longer babbling inanely aboutdates.
Another thing that made no sense was that she found it fascinating the way his dark brows pulled together. The way he seemed somehow less icily contained and controlled than he had when they’d walked in here.
It made her imagine things she shouldn’t.
“You came all the way to find me in Alaska, so I assume you actually want to survive,” he was saying, and he didn’t sound clipped or commanding. He sounded ticked off. “But survival isn’t just finding some bad guys and handling them. That’s my job, and I’ll do it. You need to take care of yourself. It doesn’t look to me like you have the slightest idea how to do that.”
That stung, and she frowned up at him, crossing her arms in front of her in a way she knew, even as she didit, was much too defensive. She did it anyway, because her hands couldn’t be trusted.
Besides, she felt pretty freaking defensive. “I’m alive, aren’t I?”
Everly really didn’t like the way he looked at her then, as if that were a subject for debate.
“You’re too skinny,” he said flatly. “It looks like you barricaded yourself in this apartment and didn’t come out for weeks. Is that about right?”
“I have a job. So, yes, I went out. When I had to.” She pointed at him, because she wanted to do something like punch him in his chest, but she wasn’t that foolish. She knew she’d hurt her hand if she tried. “And don’t talk about my body. It’s none of your business.”
He let out that laugh that wasn’t remotely amused. “As the bodyguard you just hired to—guess what—guard that body? Yeah, it is. And there’s no point wasting my time saving your life if you snap in half at the first hint of a breeze.”