Page 26 of Hot Pursuit
She had to hit him where it hurt.
Jo swallowed and tried to wipe the stress from her features, the little cracks in her façade that gave him a view to a place she didn’t want a Fed to have access to—her heart. “Haven’t you ever had a dream, Agent Parker?”
Good, she thought to herself as the words slipped out, calm and collected and verging on dismissive. Not heady and full of unspoken desires.
He narrowed his gaze. Those baby-blues darted across her face, trying to dissect every line etched into her skin, the reflective glass of a microscope as it zoomed in. Then he shrugged. “I’m living mine.”
He answered like she thought he would.
A gift presenting her with the perfect opening.
Jo raised her brows and cocked her hip, leaning her weight to one side as she shifted a little closer, getting into his personal space. His eyes dropped to her chest, rose to her lips, then settled on her eyes. Proximity was an underestimated weapon.
“Ah, yes… Taking after dear old Dad.” She said it like an accusation, making her voice breathy and seductive, reaching for any trick at her disposal to regain the upper hand as her words fired like a bullet straight to the center of his chest.
Agent Parker’s gaze hardened to cut sapphire as a blaze of pain passed over his irises, quick as lightning, gone in a flash, leaving glass in its wake. “My father was a hero.”
His voice was raw.
Hurt.
The sound made Jo pause.
She’d known the jab would pinch, but she hadn’t thought it would land as true as it did. Actually, she’d found surprisingly little information about the entire incident, even with her very specialized skills. His father had died twenty years before, killed while on active duty, leaving Agent Parker’s mother to raise her three children alone. But now, staring into his eyes, Jo had to wonder if there was something more—something that had never made the news, something maybe the bureau had helped bury.
Jo thought of her own mother. Lost to cancer. Just another statistic to an outside viewer, yet a decade had gone by, and the wound still bled. Open and aching. The sort of cut that never healed, no matter how much time had passed.
Idiot. Idiot.
Guilt churned in her gut. She never should have said anything. She never should have brought it up. Never should have used that lowest of the low blows against him.
“I—” Jo started to apologize, but Nate cut her off.
“At least my father is someone I can be proud of.”
Jo’s hackles immediately rose.And I was about to apologize to this oaf!“I’m proud of my father.”
“Proud of a criminal?” Agent Parker scoffed.
Jo pressed her pointer finger into the center of his firm chest. “Proud of a man who took care of his family in the only way he knew how. Proud of a man who pushed his own grief aside to ease mine. Proud of a man who has done everything within his power to keep the people he loves safe from anyone who might wish us harm, including you.”
“Me?” He guffawed. “Safe from me? Do you have any idea who your father even is? What he’s done? He’s a bad person, Jo. The worst kind. I’m trying to keep other people safe from him.”
Something in his accusation made her heart thunder in her chest. The disbelief in his tone. The earnestness. The conviction.
Why?she almost wanted to ask.What for?
Her father was a crook, a thief. He stole art. He sold forgeries. He had a lot of money he probably shouldn’t. Sure, he wasn’t the role model of the century, but there were worse people in the world. Dangerous people. Real criminals. He wasn’t hurting anyone. Not really.
…right?
Jo licked her lips as her mouth went dry.
“You and I have different interpretations of the word ‘bad,’” she murmured, trying to brush his accusation aside. But the hoarse tone of her voice was unconvincing, even to her.
“There’s only one interpretation.”
“Oh really?” she charged, letting her frustration carry her forward. Anger was so much easier than doubt, so much easier than fear. “A man goes into a grocery store and gets caught stealing a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread, good or bad?”
