Page 5 of Riggs (The Maddox BRAVO Team #2)

Vanessa

Seattle does this thing where the rain is more of a whisper than a storm, like the sky is confiding in you.

By the time we drop our bags in the room and regroup, the drizzle has turned the city lights into watercolor.

The hotel lounge glows with amber lamps, velvet booths, a little stage with a trio tuning up, and a dance floor that looks like trouble for two people pretending to date.

Riggs does a slow scan before we even cross the threshold.

It’s subtle: a shift of his shoulders, eyes taking in exits, sight lines, the couple necking in the corner booth, the bartender polishing a glass without looking down.

He’s in a charcoal button-down now, sleeves rolled, beard trimmed to temptation, earpiece a small black dot that means he’s still working no matter how soft the lighting is.

I tug at the cuff of my blouse as if that will steady my pulse. “So.” I aim for light and land somewhere breathless. “We’re doing this?”

He tips his chin at the hostess, already moving me with a hand at the small of my back. “We’re doing this,” he says, voice low and calm.

Our table’s near the dance floor, far enough to see the room, close enough that the band’s stand-up bass thumps through my bones in a slow, confident heartbeat. The hostess leaves two menus; the bartender catches my eye and nearly drops a shaker. Recognition travels like a wave—subtle, then not.

I slide into the booth. Riggs takes the outside seat like he always does, body angled to keep the room in frame and me inside the curve of his arm.

The move is practiced, protective…and it reads intimate.

I feel heat climb my throat. We’re supposed to be the couple everyone’s whispering about.

The internet already decided we are. All we have to do now is make it convincing.

“Ground rules,” he says, not looking away from the room.

“You and your rules,” I tease, grateful for the familiar script.

“Saved your life so far,” he says. Then the edge softens. “One: we sit with good sight lines. Two: if a fan approaches, I’m the boyfriend unless we need to pivot. Three: you eat real food.”

I blink. “Excuse me?”

“You live on adrenaline and iced coffee. Not tonight.” He flips his menu without reading it. “Protein.”

“That’s bossy,” I say. It comes out warmer than it should.

“It’s protective.” He finally cuts me a side look. “I can be both.”

An ache curls low in my stomach. The server appears before I can answer, and I order a whiskey sour because it sounds like something a woman pretending not to be nervous would drink. Riggs orders coffee, black. Of course.

When the server leaves, I lean in, my voice dropping to that just-for-us register. “Are we going to talk about the fact that I told a stranger you’re my boyfriend? Or the fact that you kissed me in an airport because it was the only way to get me out alive?”

His jaw ticks. “Which part do you want to talk about?”

“All of it,” I say. “Some of it. The part where you didn’t exactly hate it.”

That gets me half a smile, quick and dangerous. “We’re using the cover,” he says. “Dean’s call.”

“That’s not a denial.”

“Wasn’t meant to be.”

My drink arrives. I take a sip for courage and nearly moan because it’s perfect—lemon bright, bourbon warm, the froth sweet on my tongue. Riggs watches my mouth like he’s memorizing. Heat crawls up my neck.

“Tell me something true,” I say, because deflection is my favorite game and because I want to know him outside commands and corridors. “Not about security. About you.”

He takes his time answering. “I like early mornings,” he says. “Before the city has opinions.”

“That’s poetic.”

“Don’t tell anyone.” He takes his coffee like a challenge and sets it down. “Truth for truth. Your turn.”

“I wear ridiculous socks on travel days,” I confess, lifting my cuff to show teal with tiny croissants. “For luck.”

His mouth twitches. “You think luck wears cotton.”

“I think luck likes being invited.”

He shakes his head as if I’m an unsolvable equation he likes doing anyway. The band eases into something sultry. A couple slides onto the floor, bodies tucked close enough that the air between them disappears.

“Next question,” he says. “Who’s Kellan?”

I roll my eyes, not wanting to think about my ex-boyfriend. Not really even an ex, more like a man who wanted fame so he thought I was his golden ticket there. “Ex-boyfriend.”

“How long did you two date?”

If Riggs followed me on social media he’d have all his answers, but a part of me is glad he doesn’t know every single thing about me. “A year, maybe less. It was stupid. He wanted fame, and I wanted… something else.”

“Where is he now?” His brown eyes lock on mine.

I shake my head. “I’m not really sure. Last I heard he was trying to make it big with a YouTube channel.”

Riggs stares back at the dancefloor, watching the couples dance, all calculation and caution, then glances at me. “Cover,” he says.

“Cover,” I echo, and my pulse rockets.

He stands and holds out a hand like we’ve done this a thousand times. Callused palm, heat like a secret. I let him pull me to the floor, awareness crackling through me like static. We find a corner where the lighting leaves us darker, soft, the kind of shadow that turns everything private.

He sets one hand at my waist, the other threads our fingers. My free hand goes to his shoulder out of necessity and then in no time at all out of need. He’s solid under the thin barrier of cloth. The bass thrums. My insides coil with need.

“Relax,” he murmurs, mouth close to my temple. “Let me lead.”

The words flutter through me, low and hot.

“Bossy,” I whisper again, but I do it. I let go a fraction, let him set the arc of our steps.

He moves like the music plugged into his bones, unhurried, sure.

Every small shift of his hand at my waist maps how to move me with him.

Professional. Possessive. Something I shouldn’t name.

Across the room, a woman I don’t know lifts her phone and aims it at us. Riggs feels me stiffen before I do and turns us with a pivot that puts his back to the lens and my face into the shelter of his chest. “I’ve got you,” he says, not even pretending it’s just for the fan.

I breathe him in. He smells like pine and something completely unique to him. Like all man and grit. “We’re going to be a thing by morning,” I murmur into his collar, and my lips brush the barest bit of skin where his shirt is open. His exhale is not entirely professional.

“Already are,” he says. “Use it.”

I tip my head back to look at him. “Then kiss me like you mean it.”

The smallest pause, the longest inch between us.

He searches my face like he could find a trap there and springs the only one that matters when I don’t flinch.

His mouth finds mine with a precision that is nothing like cautious and everything like claimed.

It isn’t rough; it isn’t sweet. It’s heat carefully applied, the way he’d lay a charge—exactly where it needs to be to change the room.

My hand fists in his shirt. He makes a sound, quiet and raw, somewhere in his chest, and angles us so the world sees what we want it to see and I get the real thing, the one that pulls my toes off the floor.

The music wraps around us, bass and sax and the whisper of rain against a window nobody bothered to shut.

We break for air, our bodies still swaying because neither of us remembered to tell our hips to stop.

“You’re trouble,” I whisper, forehead to his jaw because that’s where it lands if I’m honest.

“You started it,” he says, and I can feel the smile.

We dance two songs like that—close enough to pass for one silhouette—and between verses we learn each other in small, specific truths.

“Favorite thing to cook?” I ask, because it’s the quickest way to get to know someone.

“Chili,” he says. “Hot enough to negotiate.”

“I’m a pancakes girl,” I say. “Breakfast for dinner is therapy.”

“Noted.” His breath brushes my ear. “I fix squeaky hinges at two a.m. when I can’t sleep.”

“I hum while I get ready,” I tell him. “To trick my brain into thinking everything’s light.”

“I count exits to trick mine into silence.”

“I know.” I tip my head so I can see his eyes and let the truth sit bare in mine. “I see you doing it.”

Something softer than relief flickers across his face, there and gone. “You shouldn’t have to.”

“I shouldn’t have to be scared either,” I say. “And yet. Here we are.”

He doesn’t kiss me for that. He tightens his hand at my waist and moves us through a turn that feels like trust.

We take a table break when the trio shifts to something faster.

Food arrives—steak for him, salmon for me, both more delicious than they have any right to be when my body is pure electricity.

He cuts my salmon into neat bites like he doesn’t even notice he’s doing it until I laugh softly and steal a piece of steak off his plate in retaliation.

“Protein,” I remind him.

He gives me a look that says he both hates and respects being teased. “Eat.”

“I’m eating.”

“Eat more.”

I pop the steak bite in my mouth and make a show of enjoying it. His eyes darken in a way that makes my knees consider new religions.

A couple stops by the table—tourists with matching flannels and an aura of good intentions. “We love your videos,” the woman gushes. “Are you two?—?”

“Dating,” Riggs says, smooth as a lie and honest in a way that makes my breath catch. His arm slides around my shoulders for the photo; his hand squeezes once at the curve of my arm, a coded check-in: you okay?

“Perfect,” the woman sighs after the flash. “You look like you belong.”

When they move on, I turn back to the only face that matters. “We do,” I say, daring myself. “Belong.”

His eyes say don’t do this to me and please don’t stop at the same time. “Eat your salmon,” he says, which is either a retreat or an invitation to survive together before we do anything else.