Page 46 of Sniper

“Talk to me.” She stopped in front of me, both of us trapped in the doorway with little room to move.

I snorted. “I could say the same thing to you.”

Her gaze narrowed and her nostrils flared but she stomped into the room, taking a spot as far away from me as she could without leaving the shared space. “Well?”

I closed the door and walked across the room to the bed where I bent to grab a wooden box from underneath. “I have something for you.”

Katey took a step back, wary as if she thought there was a snake inside. “What is it?”

My lips twitched but I worked hard to keep my expression blank. “It’s a box. Open it.” I waited her out until she inched forward—ever the skittish kitten—and grabbed the box before she jumped back against the wall and opened it.

Her tense shoulders fell slightly as she took in the gift. “But… this is… why?” She looked up and blinked quickly as if to ward off tears. “Why?”

“Why not?” The fact that she was so damn shocked by a simple gift was proof enough that she needed this. “You’ve learned to shoot and now you have your own means of protection. You have me but you also have you.”

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Katey

You also have you.

Sniper couldn’t have known how much those four little words meant to me. Inside the operating room, or the chaos of the ER, I was always sure of myself and my skills, my ability to handle any situation. In the rest of my life? I felt uncertain, less than. To a man like Sniper, who was a real life superhero in human form, a man who protected people from the worst parts of life, for him to acknowledge that I could take care of myself meant the world to me.

The gun, a nine-millimeter with a deep blue gripped handle, was gorgeous. It was compact and lightweight, nestled inside a gorgeous wooden box with my initials engraved on a silver plaque affixed to the lid. “It’s… gorgeous.” I looked up at this man, so different from me in just about every way imaginable was the first person in a long time, possibly ever, who saw me. Whogotme. “Thank you.”

He seemed uncomfortable, either with my compliment or my gratitude, or both. “Yeah, of course.”

“No.” I shook my head. “It’s not just the gun, it’s what it means. You have… you can’t know what this means to me.” My smile came shaky. “You taught me how to protect myself instead of just giving me your protection.”

He stood to his full height and shoved his hands deep in his pockets. “You’re a capable woman, Katey.”

“In the ER sure, but I think you’re the first person in a long time to think so out here in the real world.”

His green gaze seared my skin even as it held me in place. “Then they haven’t been paying attention.”

“You can be charming when you want to be,” I teased as I worked hard to shove down these inconvenient feelings because there was no place for them in our fake marriage.

He smiled and it was as beautiful as ever but there was an underlying hint ofsomethingswirling in his green eyes.

“Thank you for this.” I hugged the box to my chest one last time and set it on the desk beside me before turning back to face him. Something else was on his mind and it didn’t take a medical degree to figure out what it was. I fisted my hands on my hips and prepared to tell him everything. “So what is it you want to talk about?”

He folded his arms and watched me carefully as several minutes passed. I felt itchy under the weight of his gaze, but I just stood there and waited.

And waited.

“We need to talk about the very thing that you don’t seem to want to talk about.”

I knew it was coming. I’d been waiting for this moment for weeks but still I didn’t have an answer, or rather I couldn’t seem to push the words past my lips. Flushed with embarrassment, I looked away.

He let out a frustrated sigh. “This isn’t about me being all in your business Katey, this is about finding out why the fuck this asshole is so untouchable.”

“I can’t.” My voice was weak and thready.

“You can, dammit. I need you to tell me everything.” His nostrils flared but that was the only indication of anger. He didn’t lunge forward, didn’t ball his hands into fists to intimidate me. He just waited. “Please.”

I opened my mouth and closed it. My eyes closed and I summoned up all the courage that I could muster before I opened my mouth again. And closed it. “I… can’t.”

“Katey,” he sighed. “Without all the information my brothers and I are sittin’ fuckin’ ducks. You get that don’t you?”

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