Page 169 of Love Me in the Dark

The most I can conjure is the calm. Minus the sweet.

“When’s the flight…um, whoever you are?”

He turns, and for a moment, it’s like looking at destiny.

I can’t breathe.

He’s the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen and I think maybe the most dangerous.

Heart thumping hard, the air swirls hard and fast as I look into his dark, sable eyes. Something inside of me fractures. Those eyes hold a thousand stories – hard, soft, sad, cruel, bitter, passionate. There’s heat, too, right behind the wall of ice.

My mother once told me when I was a little girl the eyes would show me my prince. But I don’t think this man is a prince. He might be a fallen angel instead.

“Cal Quinn.” The gravel voice holds velvet at its depths and his name rolls over me, licking against my skin, humming down beyond my flesh. “And we’re not flying but driving.”

I try and work out the meaning of that. “Do you work for my father or for Oliver?”

A ghost of a smile touches those chiseled lips. “Let’s just say I’m the third-party hire who’ll get you to the church on time.”

I push a wayward curl back from my face and take a deep breath. “Well, let’s get on with it, shall we?”

2

QUINN

Hellena O’Brian is a bargaining chip in a fucking dress. She’s mafia princess, down to her DNA. One last job so I can disappear off this path I tumbled down.

Nothing more than a job. Whether or not I like a sadistic bastard like Oliver Dowd, a bastard like her father, or any of the other lowlifes littering this particular corner of the world of organized crime and mafia.

I do things for hire. I’m an elite ghost, I kill, trade secrets, bring bastards down or keep them safe. It all depends on the zeroes after the numeral at the beginning.

Problem is I took the wrong job, got caught in the system, and took the heat for Dowd’s New York number one. Getting sent to prison should have been enough but one of Sean O’Brian’s men was also in lock up and I saved him, which made me the perfect choice for this job.

A neutral player who, if I get the goods—Hellena—to Chicago, gets to walk free of mafia entanglements and have all boards cleared, something these men like. Them owing you can be dangerous. Sometimes more than if you owe them.

It should be an easy job.

And if the princess with the dark red curls, creamy skin, red lips, and amber eyes is a little appealing, it’s nothing I can’t handle.

I had a friend, Mercer, in prison. We always had each others’ backs. He got out before me, but like recognizes like and the man has skills and contacts I could use for this job. Not that I’d waste a favor on a girl whose life was shaped for what I’m delivering her to.

My chest tightens.

If there’s a twinge in me, like a muscle I haven’t worked out for a long time, something like conscience, then it’s nothing I can’t ignore.

I know what Oliver Dowd is. I know how he treats women, and a wife…it’s no life at all for the flame of Hellena O’Brian, with her fiery eyes and soft, kissable mouth.

We’ve been on the road about an hour and she sits quiet, the kind of quiet that won’t shut the fuck up, the kind of quiet that fidgets and moves with a life of its own.

“No one would spring for a plane ticket?”

The mild bite of sarcasm in her honeyed voice makes me smile and my stomach tighten. The confines of the car are a little tight because of her. Again, nothing I can’t handle. I’ve been attracted to women I can’t have before. And if her pull is a little strong, I just ignore it.

“My father has a private plane, but…” She breathes out. “I imagine your boss Oliver has one, too. What does that say about me?”

“He’s not my boss.”

“That’s right, you’re a third-party hire. One without balloons.”