Page 19 of When He Fights
“I have a plan.”
“Do you?”she challenged.
He nodded.
“I have one, too,” she revealed to Grayson and to Kane because they should both be aware of it.“My plan involves me not being used as bait.It involves me not finding a knife shoved into my side because my freak ex gets to me again and pins me to a bed and tells me that he won’t cut my face but the rest of me is fair game and?—”
Kane put her down.Her feet touched the floor, but before she could launch for freedom, he’d spun her around.His head lowered.He got really close.All up in her space.
As if he hadn’t been in my space before.
“That willneverhappen again,” Kane vowed.“I will not let himeverput a knife to you, and if you hadn’t stopped me before, he’d be cold in the ground right now.We wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
For a moment, she could not breathe.The past was between them in that instance.She could see Kane as he held the gun to Logan’s head.Kane had wanted to pull the trigger.She’d known it.She had never seen such hate and fury on Kane’s face before that time.But Logan hadn’t been armed by that point.He hadn’t been fighting back.And…
I couldn’t let Kane become a killer.Not for me.Not because of me.
“It will never happen again,” Kane promised.“Idon’tmake the same mistake twice.”
Her head moved in the slightest nod.
“Great!”A loud and pleased exclamation from Grayson.“This is what I am talking about.”
She peered over her shoulder at him.
Grayson fired a happy smile her way.“Motivation,” he elaborated.“Kane has it.He will do anything to keep you safe.Sure, I could bring in a new guard—or even guards, plural—to keep you safe, but would they have Kane’s motivation?His drive?His…personal interest?”
“Gray.” A sharp warning from Kane.
Grayson pursed his lips.“I don’t think they would,” he said after a brief pause, answering his own set of rambling questions.“I think Kane is the perfect man for the job, and I also think that, deep down, you’re happy to see him, Ana.”
Happywasn’t quite the right word.But then again, she didn’t exactly hate seeing him so…dammit.She was all messed up.“I won’t be bait.”There.Ana stepped away from Kane and Kane’s tempting scent.Like, masculinity in a bottle or something.Rich and sandalwoody and just…sexy.
She exhaled.Put a bit more space between them.The better to not drink in his scent.Ana positioned her body between Grayson and Kane.“Not bait,” she repeated.
“Let’s not use the B word,” Grayson offered.“Let’s think of this situation more as…the FBI helped you quite extensively in the past.You wanted a new life.We gave you one.And now, it’s time to pay back the debt.”
Her brows shot up.“Excuse me?Ipaidthat debt when I wore a wire and got all the evidence for you.And then when I testified against Logan—and against the mob guys I’d seen him with back in New York.Let’s not forget all that.”Logan wasn’t her only enemy.She’d spilled all that she’d seen and heard.Plenty of people had been caught in the FBI’s web—uh, her web—and sentenced to prison.
She’d needed a new life so that she could keep breathing after all of that.
“Logan could have fled the country.”Grayson began to amble around her kitchen.Poking and prodding at things.“And, it’s a possibility that he actuallydidleave.We should not overlook that scenario.”
“If you believed that possibility, you wouldn’t be here right now.”She darted a look at Kane and found his hazel eyes locked and loaded on her.“Neither of you.”Because Kane would never have come back into her life.
He was the walk-away-and-never-look-back type.
Not the…I’m-dying-without-you-and-I-need-you-to-make-my-life-completetype.Unfortunately.
“Logan has a great many connections in this world.”Grayson’s voice had turned musing.“But, according to the psychiatrist who worked with him, he also has quite a fixation.On you.”
“Some girls just have all the luck,” she muttered.Goosebumps rose on her arms.
“The psychiatrist believes that Logan will seek you out.Considering the, ah, hack at the FBI, I also believe he is seeking you out.He’s a moth.You’re the flame.I’d like for you to draw him in until he gets burned.”
“Or untilIget burned,” she said.She still had the scar from her last encounter with Logan.
“Not happening,” Kane promised in that rumbly voice of his.
