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Blue agreed. But he had his own full-time job, and he needed to do it—and fast, so he could get out of Chicago and away from the woman who was making him crazy.
It took him longer than it should have to find a number for Rebecca’s mother, which he couldn’t help but think was yet another red flag.
He left Annabeth Lambert a message on her voice mail, asking her to call him because he had information about her daughter. It was the kind of message that usually got a call back within the hour.
But Rebecca’s mother didn’t take the bait.
Blue accepted that he was going to have to hunt Annabeth Lambert down. She was another woman with financials that didn’t make any sense, and he needed to see if two puzzle pieces that didn’t make any sense apart made sense together. He bet they would.
And in the meantime, there was Everly, who was on track to drive him around the bend long before he got to the bottom of what had happened to her roommate.
“I have to have an explanation for who you are,” sheannounced that night when he picked her up from work. “It’s been a week.”
One week was edging toward a second, in fact, and all Blue had discovered so far was that Rebecca Lambert lived beyond what ought to have been her means with money he couldn’t explain. As far as he could tell from scouring the laptop in her bedroom, she hadn’t been doing anything more illicit than streaming movies for free. If she was secretly a call girl or selling her organs, he couldn’t find any evidence of it. The Alaska Force computer geniuses couldn’t, either—and they could find anything.
“It’s not normal to have a bodyguard,” Everly was saying.
Blue stopped trying to figure out Rebecca Lambert and focused on Everly instead. Tonight she was wearing one of those outfits of hers that he thought was designed to cause him actual grievous bodily harm. A pair of trousers in a cute pattern that showed off entirely too much of her legs and butt, with more of those high wedges she ran around in that made her calves look like heaven. He could torture himself for hours imagining those legs tossed over his shoulders or wrapped around his hips—and did. Add a frilly blouse that offered the odd impression of her lacy bra beneath and he was barely able to stand upright.
But he managed. Somehow, he managed, even though every day he thought she was so pretty and socuteit might actually succeed in taking him apart. When all his years in the navy, under attack by enemy forces, hadn’t cracked him.
“It’s not anybody’s business who I am,” he said now.
Clearly she was no longer in awe of him, because she rolled her eyes. “It’s not about whether or not it’s someone’s business. It looks weird. Because it is weird.”
He’d spent enough time in this lobby over the past week. He could tell when the people walking by were her coworkers by the side-eye and speculation they threw her way as they headed outside into the summer evening. And she wasn’t wrong. There were more of them by the day.
“I get that your office is a little out-of-the-box,” she said, as if she were trying to manage him. He was almost entertained. “Try to imagine how you would react if suddenly one of your friends showed up with some other, random person who was alwaysright nextto them. I think you’d find that strange.”
“Then make up a story,” he suggested. “Tell them I’m your—”
“Brother?”
“Sure,” he drawled, because she was turning pink. Watching her blush was one of his new favorite things, and he never seemed to get enough of it. “Call me your brother if you want.”
“That would never work.” She sounded fuzzy, and Blue liked that, too. “Everyone knows my brother is a doctor who lives across the country. He would hardly have time to follow me around like a shadow. I mean, maybe for one day. As a visit. But not, you know, for weeks on end.”
“Then tell them I’m your boyfriend.” He let his mouth curve. “And I’m possessive.”
The pink turned to red, and that was even better. “Who would believethat?”
She laughed. Nervously.
Blue did not. “You don’t think I look like boyfriend material?”
“I think that the termboyfriendimplies the kind of relationship that is significantly less intense than... this.” Everly waved her hands at him. “You don’t look like the kind of man who becomes a boyfriend.” As if she were afraid that might hurt his feelings, she hurried on. “To me, I mean.”
He studied her flushed face. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Too skinny, for one thing,” she threw back at him, too quickly. “A stick figure, I think you said.”
“Let’s clarify something,” he drawled, though he shouldn’t have. He knew he shouldn’t touch any of this with a ten-foot pole or two. “I said you looked too weak to fight off bad guys. I didn’t say that was unattractive. Particularly if a man wasn’t looking for a fight.”
Everything went still, and it was as if the whole of the world fell away, leaving nothing but Everly. But if Blue was honest, that had been true since the moment she’d roared up in her car and changed everything.
He told himself he knew what he was doing. He was tired of fighting her; that was all. He’d fought his whole life—he’d made a career out of winning—but he couldn’t fight this. He couldn’t fight her. Not anymore.
Everly let out a kind of sigh. She looked down, then away. She swayed toward him, resting her hand on his abdomen, just below his ribs.