Worth the Risk(73)
“Don’t even start that hero crap again,” he says, but he’s laughing right along with me.
“Oh, Mr. Malone, you are such a hero,” I continue.
“Says the defiant damsel.” He hands me a glass and begins to fill it with the almost spilled wine. “Scratch that—says the queen manipulator.”
“It was all Rissa,” I refute as I take a sip.
“Uh-huh. I’m not buying that for a second.”
“It was, I swear. I told her you were the one who was going to win the contest. She has her sights on another guy. She decided to plant a few stories in the Gazette—against my knowledge, I might add—to make sure it was a ‘fair fight.’”
“She doesn’t think I can win?”
“Not against her man,” I say, realizing I’m spurring on the competitive side of the man next to me.
“Bullshit,” he snorts, and it makes me laugh. “Rissa? It was seriously Rissa who set all this shit up?”
“The article. The hero party. Not my idea.” His eyes find mine through the moonlit darkness. “Now you have no reason to be mad at me, right? Your brothers signed you up, and she egged it on.”
“You’re far from innocent, Thorton.”
“Only in all the right ways.” That earns me a pinch on my side. “For a man who takes risks for a living, though, you should learn to be a little more comfortable being called a hero.”
“Whatever.” He takes a drink of his Coke and leans back on one hand.
“Tell me about the High Sierras.”
“They’re a mountain range in California,” he says drolly.
“No shit.” A part of me loves that he helps without wanting the attention, but I want to hear this story for me, not because I want to use it for votes. “What about the hikers you rescued?”
He looks over to me with an angle to his head and a sudden shyness in his expression. “Who said I rescued any hikers?”
“C’mon. Everyone knows it was you, why are you too shy to talk about it?”
“I don’t rescue people to get accolades.”
“No one said you did.” I can’t figure out why he’s so cagey about responding.
“Anything I tell you is off the record, right? No telling Rissa so she can call the Gazette.”
“This whole date is off the record.”
His smile spreads across his lips and warms so many parts of me. “I don’t talk about it because it was stupid on my part.” His voice lowers, his eyes soften.
“I would hardly say that saving a whole family is stupid.”
“Yeah, but I could have ruined lives, too. I took off, thinking only about Luke. Thinking about how, if that were my son, I’d move heaven and earth to find him and save him. It wasn’t until I was in the air and the chopper pitched and swayed that I realized how goddamn stupid I was. That I was risking my life and could very well end up leaving Luke fatherless. It was a stupid move. Just too risky.”
“And, yet, you did it again, and it got you grounded.”
He falls silent and shifts to meet my eyes. “If someone needs help, I have a hard time turning my back.”
“And that’s why you’re good at your job.”
“Like I said, I take too many risks.”
“Not all risks are bad things.”
It has to be the damn moonlight in her hair.
Or the high altitude.
But every time I look at her, I think that this is too perfect. That this feels too real. That she makes me feel way too comfortable.
Then I tell myself to step back from the ledge. That I’m only allowing myself to think shit like that because of the night and the moon and I’m fucking thrilled to be getting back in the air.
Good things.
Positive things.
Things that make me wonder if the woman sitting next to me is too good to be true.
“Thank you for bringing me up here,” she murmurs, her lips pressed against my bare chest. Her tits are warm against my body, her thigh hooked over mine as if we are casually lying in a bed instead of on a mountaintop in a field of wispy grass.
Who knew uptown Sidney would have been okay with that?
Maybe I was testing her to see her reaction. Could she handle my flying? Would she trust me? Would she be okay coming to one of my favorite spots in the world?
She passed with flying colors, but now what? What other tests could I possibly ply her with to prove she isn’t Claire? When do I stop and just trust that she isn’t?
Sabotage is never pretty when you’re trying to do it to something good.
“Earth to Grayson?”
“Sorry. I was just thinking.” I shake my head and meet her eyes.
“I thought I just sexed you up so good that you couldn’t think.”
“Ah, you’re right. Maybe I should call you the dick ninja.”
She bursts out laughing, and the sound of it shakes the negative thoughts from my mind. Christ. I can’t even enjoy an evening without throwing my past in my own face to screw it up.
“The dick ninja. I like that.”
“Those words sound so funny coming from you, the prim and proper Sidney Thorton.”
“I don’t think anything that I just did to you was very prim or proper.”