Deadly Promises (Tracers #2.5)(5)

No one here would recognize her since she’d been hidden away most of her life and the only way anyone would know of her family was if they were in law enforcement or were a criminal.

She avoided both.

The reporter lowered the camera to hang from a strap around his neck. “What’s your name and where do you live?”

“Cecelia… Caprice.” When would that name come easily to her so she didn’t hesitate each time to make sure she said her full name correctly? She’d better get used to it. Besides, Caprice was her true last name, the one she’d had at birth.

“I live in Marietta,” she answered. Along with some sixty thousand residents, so no significant details shared there. In spite of her new freedom, she’d been raised in a cautious environment and taught to divulge only specific information when asked a question.

“Has yoga been a hobby of yours for a long time?” he asked over his shoulder then clicked his pen several times, muttering something before he squatted down to dig through his bag. “Hang on a minute.”

A hobby? Hell, no, yoga had never been something as simple as a hobby. She’d first started ten years ago, as a way to survive her mother’s death and deal with the dangers associated with her family. The discipline had kept her sane in a world where her every move was orchestrated and every word had to be thought out and edited before speaking. Impulsive had never been part of her vocabulary, which hadn’t been easy as hormones had taken over her body.

She wanted impulsive, damn it.

CeCe kept stretching and squelched a frown at the word “hobby,” which reminded her of Jeremy Sunn, her sexy neighbor. He’d hobbled over to where she’d been washing her dual-cab pickup truck and hosing off her statue base the day after they met at the mailbox and asked if she statue-modeled for a hobby.

What was it with men?

Just because she didn’t sweat and grunt at her job didn’t mean she wasn’t working. Did Jeremy think owning a gym was a real job? An image of that ripped body sweating and grunting as he lifted weights in the gym sent a bead of perspiration trickling down between her makeup-caked breasts.

CeCe mentally whitewashed that picture before her camo makeup turned molten and puddled at her feet. She’d never seen him during the first two weeks she’d lived in the neighborhood, then he showed up one day, limping. He’d been hurt on the job but never explained how and she hadn’t pressed him. Guys do stupid things when they get in a gym around other men. Jeremy might be embarrassed to explain how he got injured.

She’d decided to join his gym to do her daily yoga routines, but to be honest she suffered another hour of workout to see Jeremy a few extra hours a day.

For someone who had been a major flirt during that first meeting at the mailboxes, Jeremy was all business at his gym, polite to women and sharing a quick joke with guys. At first, she’d been grateful over the remote decorum he maintained there since she had to keep her distance from any man in public. But her gratitude slowly turned an evil green color when she noticed the other women ogling him and overheard their seductive comments about his beautiful body.

Yoga did little to smother her irritation.

CeCe had never enjoyed the freedom to flirt with a guy. Not if she wanted to see him a second time, which was why she made the most of her exclusive time with Jeremy when they were both home by asking him to help her around the yard and making him iced tea.

Anytime she was sure her brother wasn’t expected to visit.

Her little adventure had been going great until she’d almost accepted a date with Jeremy after he’d spent yesterday afternoon planting pansies in her yard.

A breath before she’d screwed up and said yes, she’d heard a big sedan engine rumbling nearby that could have been her brother. In a moment of panic over her sibling catching her alone with a man, she’d rebuffed Jeremy with the excuse she had plans with her brother. Then her brother hadn’t shown up after all. Talk about feeling like an idiot.

Jeremy had politely backed away.

But those vivid green eyes of his had dulled with the rejection. She hadn’t seen him in a full day—a lifetime without his smile and rich voice.

She should have used her I’m-looking-for-a-husband spiel the first time they met, which usually obliterated any male interest for good and spared a man having to face her brothers.

The men in her family loved her but were so overprotective she was sure they’d forced one guy they hadn’t approved of years ago to disappear. Yoga had become her life to combat loneliness, her only defense against curling into a ball of despair over feeling trapped. She doubted Jeremy would pass her family’s test of “acceptable” men for her to date. They wanted her to find someone who was no threat, someone who would accept whatever she told him about her past and never dig beneath the surface to discover the truth behind the DeMitri family in Canada.

The minute any of them met Jeremy in person they’d know he wasn’t a man to be easily fooled or controlled. They’d never find Jeremy selling furniture or running a grocery store. He ran his life and world by his own rules, a prime alpha male—not dating material as far as her brothers were concerned

She envied the hell out of him.

She’d have to bide her time another couple of weeks until Vinny—one of her three older and dangerous stepbrothers—left. He would, once she convinced him she was safe living on her own. When he went back to his wife and kids in Washington, D.C., she could finally accept a date without worry of interference. Until then, no dating and she couldn’t let Jeremy know how much she wanted to be with him or what she’d really like to do with that buff body after hours in his gym, late at night with her favorite chocolate-amaretto sauce…