Page 41 of Sniper's Pride

No one else was staying in the inn this week, but he also recognized the sound of her tread. Light and careful, like the rest of her, even when she barreled into the lobby and then stopped. To stare at him.

She had showered since he’d last seen her. Her hair hung all around her and gleamed in the firelight, smelling strongly of the coconut shampoo she used. She wore those jeans that looked about as soft as her skin and clung to her in ways even he couldn’t keep from admiring. She was wrapped up in that wool cape thing again, and yet despite that, her feet were bare and her toes painted a glossy red.

The contrast might kill him.

“Is something wrong?” he asked gruffly, because this was a freaking job, not a date, and he needed to stop obsessing about what she was wearing. “Did something happen?”

She studied him for a moment, as if she were coming to some decision. Then she tipped up her chin, squared her shoulders, and pulled the wrap tighter around her torso.

“Why don’t you want me here?” she asked.

Great. They were having this conversation. “It’s nothing personal.”

“Like hell.”

That was all drawl, fire and defiance, and it hit Griffin like a grenade.

“Excuse me?”

“Of course it’s personal.” Mariah stood even taller. “It’s so personal that you can barely see straight when I’m in the same room. Why don’t you just admit it?”

“I don’t have to like a mission to complete it, if that’s your concern.”

“That’s not my concern. Youreallydon’t like me, and I want to know why.”

She moved farther into the room in that regal manner that drove him crazy. She looked like a queen, and he wanted nothing more than to get his hands on her and prove that she was as flesh and blood as he was.

He told himself it was temper, nothing more, but he knew better. Of course he knew better.

“Let me assure you, Mariah, that I have no personal feelings about you one way or the other.”

He couldn’t read the glittering expression in her eyes. But that curve in the corner of her mouth was wired directly into his sex. “I don’t believe you.”

“You want to be careful about throwing accusations around,” he warned her. “What happened upstairs? Did you get bored sitting around in your room, pretending that rural Alaska suits you? I don’t blame you. This isn’t a soft place. It takes a very specific kind of person to make it here.”

“And by ‘very specific’ do you mean... condescending? Patronizing? A man so uptight it must hurt when he sits down?”

“I know you’re not describing me. I’m not uptight, princess.”

“Meticulous. Disciplined. Guarded. Whatever you want to call it.”

“I am in complete control of myself. I take pride in it.” Griffin didn’t restrain the way he glared at her. He told himself it was a choice. “You should ask yourself why you don’t.”

“I’ve forgotten more things about control than you’llever know,” she had the nerve to throw at him. “How do you think I survived my marriage?”

“You haven’t survived it yet,” Griffin fired back. “Isn’t that why you’re here?”

“I can’t believe that you treat every client like this. In fact, I know you don’t. This is personal, Griffin. I wish you’d just admit it. Every single thing I say or do offends you, clearly.”

“You don’t offend me. You don’t bother me.” And he’d hate himself forever for the note of desperation he could hear in his own voice. “You’re a job. Not a very interesting one.”

“And you,” she said with too much quiet intensity, her blue eyes entirely too sharp, “are a liar.”

Eleven

Mariah had no idea what she was doing.

She should have been tucked up in her room, happily reading a book as night fell—later and later the longer she stayed here—the way she normally did on these blustery spring evenings.

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