Trust Me (Paris Nights #3)(23)

His mouth curved again as he tilted his head back. She slipped the spoon between his lips, and his lashes lowered a moment. “Mmm.” A secret, almost wistful sound.

She swallowed, in time with him. “You know, there’s something really sexy about a man reading.”

And saying mmm in that voice for something she put in his mouth.

His lashes lifted. “There’s something really sexy about a woman making desserts in the aftermath of a horrible event, too. Gallant.” Hazel eyes held hers. “Heroic.”

She flushed. She’d found acting like a hero pretty easy—just fear and rage and adrenaline and good reflexes. She hadn’t had time to think. But being one…being one was hard. Because you had to keep being brave, over and over, every second, night and day.

“Plus, you’re very pretty,” he said softly, like an admission, watching her.

She tucked a curl back, her cheeks growing hotter.

She had been wrong about the blushing contest. He was winning hands down.

“Sorry,” he said. “Not shy enough for you?”

She cleared her throat, went back to her work space, and set the bowl of chantilly down. She stood there, her hands braced on the marble, staring at nothing for a moment. Well, actually, staring at a lot of things. All the things in her memories, and none of them things she wanted to see.

She turned empty-handed and went back to him.

He looked up politely again from his book.

The heat of him ran through her, from her toes to the tips of her fingers.

If you might live or die in a heartbeat, on someone else’s random insane whim, it didn’t matter what you said, did it? You could say anything, do anything. Go for what you need.

It didn’t have to be curling up in his lap begging him to hold her like a fragile kitten. It could be something braver, stronger, like boxing with him only different—reaching out and seizing life with both hands.

“How do you feel about being used for sex?” she said.





Chapter 7


Jake’s eyes flared wide, and then his face went blank. Completely blank. Like a glass surface, absolutely no purchase, nothing to read to give her the slightest idea what he was thinking.

Under that unreadable assessment of her, the flush crawled back up her skin, hot in her breasts and against her palms and in her cheeks. She fought through it. She was alive, wasn’t she? Screw embarrassment.

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” he said finally. A faint clipped quality to his words, as if he was cutting each one carefully out of stone before he pronounced it.

Yeah. That was what she’d figured. A guy like him must have had more casual sexual encounters than he could start to remember. No promises and no expectations. Just a hot use of each other that blocked all other thoughts out, and then each participant in that encounter went on his or her way. He was an elite warrior who didn’t even share his real last name or possibly even his real first one. What other kind of relationships could he have with women?

“Would you get in trouble?” she said. “Fraternizing with the enemy?”

“You’re not the enemy.” His voice sounded rather flat. “You’re one of our heroes.”

One of his heroes? A hero’s hero? Her nose crinkled over a sudden stinging. “No, I’m not.”

“Yes.” That level gaze brooked no argument. “You are.”

She blinked rapidly. “Is that why you didn’t waterboard me?”

“Oh, for f*ck’s sake.” He sat up in a rough movement—but then calmed himself immediately and took her hand. The calluses teased her fingers. They made her feel, just for a moment, as if the world hadn’t changed and she was still safe. “We’re not idiots. I did hang around while you were talking to the police just in case there were some idiots in on the questioning, when you were sharing all the information you had, but there weren’t. Your RAID guys know what they’re doing.”

“I thought you were hanging around to play bad cop,” she admitted, low. “At first.”

He stared at her. “Jesus.”

“Because everyone else was being so nice.” And, well…he was American. Guantánamo. Abu Ghraib. And she was…well, she thought she was a top Parisian pastry chef, but he probably thought she was the Arab cousin of a terrorist. Both those people had the same name, but their identities were very different.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “No.”

“Well, I know that now. Now I’m assuming you’re here to play good cop.”

“I’m here to help keep you safe. I practically had to throw Ian and Mark out the hospital window for the privilege.”

She was silent a moment while she tried to digest that. Really? She was really one of his heroes? That felt…precarious. She didn’t feel heroic. She felt fragile, as if her life and the lives of all her friends could be ended at any moment. And she’d never even know it was coming.

So she made fragile desserts, which survived long enough to fulfill their purpose in existence—making someone relax in delighted pleasure. See this hair-fine spiral of sugar? It’s not broken, so neither am I.

“Maybe we should talk about sex again,” he said. “That was an…unexpected topic of conversation.”