“Why did you think you couldn’t be impartial with me? What made you think that your feelings would get in the way of doing your job?” I shake my head, undeniably confused. “You barely knew me, then.”
“Ah.” Understanding creeps across his expression. His fingers begin to move again, sliding up every indentation of my spine. It feels so good, I have to fight off shivers of pleasure.
Then again, I don’t know why I’m fighting them… Rround five doesn’t sound so bad to me…
He clears his throat lightly, drawing my attention back to the question. “I think you’re forgetting… I did know you. You just didn’t know me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I spent six months watching your life from a distance. I saw you teaching yoga classes and wandering the Farmers Market on Saturday mornings. I saw you volunteering at the dog shelter on Christmas and Easter, days no one else wanted to work. I saw you taking long runs to fill your afternoons, so many miles along the Charles River I knew you were trying to tire out your muscles to the point of exhaustion, to outrun something deep within yourself.” His expression softens. “I saw you signing up for classes to keep your weeknights busy — still-life sketching and French cooking and wood sign painting. Workshops for DIY wind-vanes and make-your-own bird feeders. And most of all, I saw the sadness on your face when you’d walk out of those classes clutching whatever new project you’d made and go back home, to that huge, empty house. Alone.” He pauses. His voice goes low, rough like I’ve never heard it before. “I saw you,Shelby. I still see you. I think, even if I go blind, I’ll see you in my dreams for the rest of my life.”
Oh, boy.
My eyes are watering dangerously and my voice, when I can summon the courage to speak, is wavering. “So you mean to tell me… all those times I got tingles on the back of my neck and told myself I was being crazy paranoid, that no one was following me…”
He grins darkly and pinches my sensitive nape in a playful move. “You should really learn to trust your instincts, Hunt.”
I smack him on the arm. “Whatever. I may be oblivious to danger, but at least I’m not a creepy stalker.”
“For the record, it’s not stalking if you’re in the FBI.”
“Keep telling yourself that.” I snort. “I think you need to look up the definition ofstalkerin the dictionary.”
Smirking softly, he pulls me closer to his chest and lets his eyes drift shut. “We can argue about it in the morning.”
“There won’t be any argument. Youhaveno argument. I’m right.”
“You’re stubborn.”
“Said the man who makes mules look reasonable.”
“Said the woman who makesmelook reasonable.”
I huff.
“Hunt.”
“What?”
His lips find mine in the dark, delivering a long lingering kiss that steals my breath and makes my heart pound twice its normal speed.
“What was that for?” I ask dizzily.
“I need a reason for kissing you goodnight?”
“No.” I pause. “But if you think you can just kiss me from now on to solve all our arguments—”
“Shelby.”
“Yeah?”
“Happy to spend all day tomorrow fighting with you… so long as we can have hot make-up sex after. But right now, I’m dead tired from not sleeping for three straight days and nearly getting my ass blown up. So unless you want me unable to deliver on said promise of hot makeup sex… go the hell to sleep.”
My eyes close so fast, I think I set a new Guinness World Record.
Chapter Twelve
STEPFORD WIFE