Page 3 of Triggered By Love
Jason’s eyebrows flicked up as he tore off the target, no doubt supremely satisfied with himself. He removed his earmuffs.
“What are you looking at?” His voice pierced the cloud of Avery’s irritated musing, snapping her gaze to his hard face.
He stalked toward her, crowding her space. He had a way of leaning slightly forward, tense and ready to jump into action.
“Nothing.” She pointed at the target, lamely, scrambling to recover as she removed her earplugs. “How’d you do that?”
“Practice.” He hooked a glance at her target, which was placed much closer in the lane than his had been. “Why are you here?”
“Shooting.”
“You taking lessons?” he asked.
“Had the basics when I got my concealed carry license,” she replied in case he thought she wasn’t prepared.
“Load up a clip. I want to see.”
“I’m not in the mood,” she said. “Carry on.”
Once, even up to a month ago, she would have been prying him for information. Asking him about leads or picking his brain for theories. But no more.
Someone had tried to kill her, and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference whether she knew who it was or not.
“Suit yourself,” Jason said. “Except if someone were coming for you, it’s better not to miss.”
She packed the rental pistol in its case and picked up any loose shells on the concrete floor. She didn’t need Jason making her feel helpless. The handgun was more a security blanket than an actual tool.
Even if someone were gunning for her, she could never picture herself taking a life. It was so irrevocable.
She stepped away from the stalls toward the door.
Hurried footsteps followed her around the cinder block wall.
“Coffee?” Jason asked.
She opened the noise-isolation door to the corridor separating the shooting stalls from the rest of the gun shop and kept walking. Maybe he’d think she hadn’t heard him over the noise of the other shooters.
He opened the door to the gun shop for her.
“Coffee?” he repeated.
“You have any new information?” she challenged, looking back over her shoulder.
He stood too close, raising the hairs on the back of her neck—not in a bad way, if she had to admit it to herself. She could sense his masculinity. The scent of gunpowder, aftershave, and animal magnetism spoke to that primal place in her.
Something curled deep in her belly, a warm, expanding sensation, but she shut it down by clamping her jaw and stepping away from him.
He wasn’t the kind of man to use and forget.
He came with consequences.
And he wasn’t forgettable.
“There isn’t a minute going by when I’m not thinking about your fiancé and who killed him,” Jason said, shouldering his ammo bag.
She’d upgraded Brando’s status to fiancé during the police interview because he’d had a diamond ring in his pocket at the time of his death. It sucked even worse that he’d held off from proposing before her big fashion show debut.
“Even a cold case?” She practically growled, regretting for the thousandth time her excitement at winning the best new designer spot in the show. If she hadn’t been such a wimp with her stage fright, she would have walked the runway alone. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t walked it a million times as a teenage model.
