Page 44

Blue slid a dark look her way, as if he could read her every murderous thought, and then returned to whatever the hell he was doing in his duffel bag.
“If it causes some confusion, good. That’s what we want.”
“Let me make sure I’m following you,” Everly said, very carefully. Very deliberately.
Possibly also very aggressively.
Blue sat back on his heels, his eyes narrowed. “Don’t start down this road, little girl. You don’t want to go there.”
“Little girl,” she repeated. And there seemed to be no containing the incredulous laugh that burst free of her then. “You do realize that every time you say that, it does the exact opposite of what you think it does, right?”
“You have no idea what I think.”
“I’m sure it makes you happy to believe that,” she said through clenched teeth. “But every time you go out of your way to diminish me, it makes me wonder why you think that’s necessary. And guess what, Blue? I can only come to one kind of obvious conclusion.”
She could see he didn’t like that.Good.
“I’m not trying to diminish you, Everly. I’m trying to save your life. If you’re not happy with the way I’m doing that, I’ll remind you that you’re the one who drove three thousand miles to find me.”
“And you’re the one who decided to act like we were in a bad thriller and throw the bad guys off our trail with a big, bad kiss. Has that ever actually worked?”
Blue stood. It was more of an unfurling, rolling up from where he’d been squatting, and Everly certainly didn’t miss the inherent threat in that.
She just didn’t care.
“I did what I had to do to confuse the issue and buy us some time,” he said, sounding like he was delivering a dry military report. And managing to imply that she was being... something. Unreasonable. Childish.Something.
“Why can’t you just admit that you wanted to kiss me, so you did?” she demanded. “Would it kill you?”
“What I want or don’t want has no place here.” He was coiled tight and about to explode. She could feel it. But she refused to let that stop her. “This is the job.”
“You’re such a liar.” She was whispering, because she was too mad to keep her voice level, but it didn’t matter. He jerked as if she’d shouted it directly into his face. “If you were in the exact same situation with a six-foot-four, burly truck driver as a client, would you have solved the problem in the same way? Would you have run through all the available scenarios and come up with that particular solution? I don’t think so.”
“You want to think you’re special,” Blue said in an even, placating kind of way that made every part of her stiffen in outraged resentment. “And I get that, Everly. I do. But if you want to survive this, you need to get your head on straight.”
“Right. Or I might find myself accidentally kissing more random men in the lobbies of office buildings andpretending that it’s crack detective work. Huh. I wonder if anyone will believe that excuse?”
“What do you want me to say?” Blue threw at her, no longer sounding even or placating.
It struck her that it was a remarkably foolish thing to do, to push a man like this until he cracked. What did she think she was doing?
But she knew. This was what she wanted. Exactly this.
Blue reeling and uncontrolled. Blue outside himself and uncertain how he got there.
Just like she was.
“Tell the truth,” she suggested, not backing down, though if she was smart, she’d run and hide. “Maybe there was a tactical, strategic advantage to kissing me like that. But that’s not the whole reason you did it. Just admit it.”
Blue looked at her for what felt like an eternity, a solitary muscle flexing in that rough jaw of his, and too much fire and electricity in the space between them.
“You want things from me that I can’t give,” he said eventually, dark and low. “I don’t know how. And I don’t want to learn.”
And Everly found herself taking a step toward him. Then another one, temper and something like betrayal too forceful inside of her to ignore.
“Is this the part where you let me down easy?” she demanded. “Don’t patronize me, Blue. You don’t know what I want from you. Neither do I. The difference between you and me is I’m not playing games of make-believe with my own intentions.”
“That’s not the difference between you and me.”His voice was harsh. Unyielding. “You have no idea the kinds of things I’ve done. And I’m not planning to clue you in. All you need to know is that you drove three thousand miles to hire a monster to chase after other monsters. That’s what I do.”