“Besides the fact that some super-spy PI is digging through my personal affairs?”
“Everyone has shit in their history they don’t want dug up.”
“Not like mine,” I muttered under my breath.
“Hey. Look at me.”
I did. My teeth dug into my lip at the look in his eyes. Gentle. Almost protective. No one had ever looked at me like I was worth protecting. Usually, it was the other way around. People treated me like I was the thing they needed protectionfrom.Like I was something to be exploited, manipulated, or, more often than not, avoided.
But Cade…
God, I could barely breathe when he was looking at me like that.
“No matter what Graves digs up, it won’t matter,” he told me in that deep, matter-of-fact tone. His arm shifted off the top of bench to curl around my shoulders, squeezing reassuringly. “He’s not going to bring that shit anywhere near you.”
I sucked in a surprised grasp as the steady weight of his arm settled around me. I hadn’t been held in a long time. A long,longtime. There was no denying how good it felt. Too good to shake off, even though I knew I should.
Fighting the urge to relax into his warmth, my whole frame was stiff with tension as I asked, “How do you know?”
“Because I’ll be standing between you two, blocking him when he tries.”
Shit.
That was a nice thing to say.
I swallowed hard against the lump in my throat. “Aren’t you curious?”
“About?”
“The things he’s going to dig up.”
“No.”
“No?”
He shook his head. His eyes never left mine, but his arm tightened around my shoulders. As though he knew what he said next was going to make me run for the hills.
“I don’t need to look into your history. I know exactly who you are, Imogen Warner.”
Chapter Nine
Everyone compliments the cute romper when you wear it. But when you get inside the bathroom stall, it’s just you and your choices.
- Imogen Warner, fully nude on a public toilet
My breath caught.
This was it.
He knew me —recognizedme — either from my childhood days of daytime television fame, or the drama that unfolded after I fled Florida as fast as I could. Unless he’d beaten Graham to the punch and run a background check of his own last night.
I supposed that was possible. Probable, even. He was a detective. He had the resources to pull up my records. They were supposed to be sealed, since I was a minor when everything with my uncle went down. But there was more — a lot more — to find if you knew where to look.
Baltimore, to be specific.
I’d been nineteen when the Crawford case exploded all over the headlines. A legal adult. A causal internet search would expose that dark chapter of my past — one I’d done my damndest to forget. I could only imagine what the internal police records said about me.
God, I had to get out of here.